This fight in the night was a thrilling affair, the chief guide on each side being the flashes of the rifles, and these were incessant. The Germans were firing rapidly at anything they could see; but there was little to see except the tiny forks of flame. They must have heard us, however, and that, of course, would help them. One strange thing happened when we reached the trench, and that was that we had to wake up some of the men. In spite of the fighting they were sleeping—but war turns everything upside down, and the British soldier reaches a point when it takes a lot to disturb him.
Suddenly, at this crisis, I felt as if my leg had been struck by something that vibrated, like a springboard, and I dropped down. I was dizzy, but did not think I was hit, and I supposed that if I stayed down for a few minutes I should be all right and able to go on. So I sat down, but quickly found that I could not move, and on feeling my leg I discovered that it was wet and warm, and I knew what that meant, so I took off my equipment and put it down and began to crawl back to the trench I had left when we charged.
I crawled across a mangel-wurzel field to a house of some sort, then I must have become unconscious, for the next thing I knew was that I was being carried along on a stretcher.
It was only yesterday that a friend in my battalion wrote to tell me that we were crawling pretty close together through the mangel-wurzel field. He was shot in the arm and stopped two of the Borderers’ stretcher-bearers just in time to have me put on a stretcher.
I had a natural walking-stick which I had cut from a vine, and of which I was very fond. I had fastened it to my rifle and was so proud of it that I said I would carry it through the war, if I could. My friend must have known how I prized the vine-stick, for when he was sent home he brought it with him, and it’s waiting for me when I leave hospital.
I also had a letter from my company officer a few days ago. He says he missed me that night, but he could not make out what had happened. He heard that a complete set of equipment had been found, and on learning that I was wounded he assumed that it was mine, and that I had been carried away and left it. He told me that on the very night I was wounded they were relieved by the French infantry, and that he himself was hit ten days afterwards. It was the day before I was wounded that I heard that I was recommended for the French Military Medal, and that was as big a surprise to me as the news that I had been given the Victoria Cross.
That equipment of mine had a tragic history. During the first day of the Aisne I was without equipment and set to work to get some. A bugler of my battalion had been killed by shrapnel and I was told by my officer to go and get his equipment. “Treat him gently, poor chap,” said the officer, and you may be sure I did. I helped myself, and thinking that the poor lad’s mother might like a memento I brought away his “iron-rations” tin. This is riddled with bullet-holes, just as the bugler was.
There is one thing more that I would like to say, and it is about my birthday, which falls on September 7th. As I had left the colours and gone into the Reserve I thought I could look forward to a fine celebration of the anniversary. And there was a fine celebration, too, for on September 7th our retiring before the Germans ended and we started to advance and drive them back.
Could any British soldier want a finer birthday celebration than that?