In the Line of Battle: Soldiers' Stories of the War

by Unknown

By this time I was blazing away from a barricade in an old covered yard, and there was a straggling fire going on all around; but it was clear that we should want reinforcements if we were to hold our own and save Messines.

At last we heard shouts, and I cannot tell you what it meant to us when we knew that the shouts came from our own fellows, and that three battalions of infantry had hurried up and got into action and given the Germans more than they could comfortably carry.

It was at this moment of the saving of Messines that I was struck by a shrapnel bullet and had to leave the fighting-line and come home, with the fight for the coast going on. I had been in it right from the start and had got used to the awful business, even to the “coal-boxes,” which the Germans were everlastingly firing. They made a particular target of the church, and for nine days bombarded it before they set the building on fire.

One of the strangest things about a shell is that you never know what it is going to do, and some of the “coal-boxes” acted like freaks.

During this bombardment of the church I watched one of the shells come, and expected that it would do something smashing, for it hit the building full in the middle of one of the main walls. I looked for the wall to be shattered, but the shell never shifted a brick or a bit of mortar; it simply burst in on itself, so to speak, and did no damage to anything except itself, and in the end the Germans got a fire going by sending a much smaller shell, something like a fifteen-pounder.

In a general way of speaking, however, these “coal-boxes” did some terrible mischief when they really exploded, and no living thing within their reach had a chance of escaping. Horses, guns, men, wagons, everything that came within the area of explosions was shattered or wiped out. Often enough men who were killed by the explosions were found in the holes, so that the shell which had destroyed them had also scooped out their grave.

There were all sorts of side issues to the actual fighting. We billeted in every kind of building, some of them very strange; but I think the strangest of all was a cow-house. This does not sound promising; but that cow-house was one of the finest places I ever slept in.

The farm itself was beautiful, and everything about it was on the latest and best scale, so that the cow-house was lighted by electricity, and the fittings were in keeping with the illumination. I had a very comfortable stretch there, and it would not have been possible for us to be better looked after. The proprietor had had notice of our coming and had made every preparation for us, and we were only too grateful for the many good things he freely gave away. We had the same sort of kindness shown to us by the French wherever we came into contact with them.

It may seem somewhat odd that a cavalryman in talking of the war should dwell so much on the trench work and the shell-fire; but in this war a great deal of the work of the cavalry has been dismounted, and practically the same as the infantry, and there has not been the chance that every cavalryman longs for to get to close grips with the enemy’s mounted forces.