Up came two Germans with a stretcher. They advanced till they were not more than twenty-five yards away, for I could see their faces quite clearly; then I took aim, and down went one of the pair and “bang” off the stretcher fell a maxim. The second German seemed to hesitate, but before he could pull himself together he had gone down too. I began to feel satisfied.
By this time the order to retire had been given and I kept on shouting, “Keep down! Crawl back!” and the lads crawled and jumped with curious laughs and curses.
In that excited retirement the man who was with me was shot in the chest. I halted for a little while to see what had really happened to him, and finding that he was killed I took his waterproof sheet and left him. I hurried on until I was in a valley, well away from the ridge; then an officer managed to get us together and lead us into a wood.
As we got into the wood I spotted a quarry. I said to the officer, “Is it best to go down here, sir?”
“I’ll have a look—yes,” he answered.
We went into the quarry, where there were Royal Scots, Middlesex, Gordons and Royal Irish.
The officer was afraid that we might be rushed, in which case we should be cut up, so he put a man out on scout. We were not rushed, however, and when the firing ceased we filed out and lined the ridge again, and there we lay, expecting the Germans to come back, but for the time being we saw no more of them.
By some means one of the Irishmen had got drunk and wanted to fight the Germans “on his own.” He was shouting for them to come on and was wandering about. Soon afterwards he was found lying on the top of the hill, having been shot in the thigh. He was carried out of action and I have never heard of him since.
After that affair of the hill-crest we had a lot of trench work, and very harassing it was. For five days we stayed in trenches, so near to the enemy that it was death to show your head.
Trench fighting is one of the most terrible features of the war, for not only is there the constant peril of instant death, which, of course, every soldier gets accustomed to, but there is also the extreme discomfort and danger of illness arising from insanitary surroundings. Often enough, too, when a new trench was being dug we would find that we were working on ground that had been previously occupied, and the spades brought up many a ghastly reminder of an earlier fight.