In a storm-swept trench—a barricade trench we called it—pointing my rifle at an enemy I could not see, I fired my first shot in battle. My section of thirteen men was in the trench which was nearest to the Germans, and that meant that we were separated from them by only a very few dozen yards. An officer of the Connaughts had given a descriptive object to fire at, and this was a small white outhouse which could be dimly made out in the darkness. The outhouse had the German trenches just in front of it, and we made a target of the building in the hope of potting the men in the trenches.
The order came, one man up and one man down, which meant that a man who was firing was standing for two hours and the man who was down was sitting or otherwise resting, or observing, as we call it.
Throughout that long night we kept up fire from the trenches, all anxious for the day to break, so that we could see what sort of a place we were in and what we were doing; but when the melancholy morning broke there was nothing to see in front of us except the portholes of the German trenches.
We had got through the first night of battle safely and had given the Germans good-morning with what we came to call the “awaking fire,” though it sent many a man to sleep for the last time—and we were settling down to make some tea. That was shortly after midday of our first day in the trenches. I was working “partners” with my left-hand man, Private Smith, who said, “I’ll just have a look to see what’s going on.”
He popped his head over the top of the trench and almost instantly he fell into my arms, for he had been shot—there must have been a sniper waiting for him—and had received what proved to be a most extraordinary wound. A bullet had struck him on the side of the head, just below the ear, and gone clean through and out at the other side, leaving a hole on each side.
“I’m hit!” said Smith, as he fell—that was all.
I was badly upset, as this was the first man I had seen shot, and being my special chum it came home to me; but I didn’t let that prevent me from doing my best for him. Smith was quite conscious, and a plucky chap, and he knew that there was nothing for it but to see it through till night came. We bandaged him up as best we could and he had to lie there, in the mud and water and misery, till it was dark, then he was able to walk away from the trench to the nearest first-aid station, where the doctor complimented him on his courage and told him what an extraordinary case it was and what a miraculous escape he had had. Later on Smith was invalided home.
During the whole of that first spell in trenches we had no water to drink except what we fetched from a natural trench half-a-mile away. Men volunteered for this duty, which was very dangerous, as it meant hurrying over open ground, and the man who was fetching the water was under fire all the time, both going and coming, if the Germans saw him. This job was usually carried out a little before daybreak, when there was just light enough for the man to see, and not enough for the Germans to spot him; and a chap was always thankful when he was safely back in the trench and under cover.
At the end of the seventy-two hours we left the trenches. We came out at ten o’clock at night, expecting to be out for three days. We marched to an old barn which had been pretty well blown to pieces by shells, and into it we went; but it was no better than the trenches. The rain poured on to us through the shattered roof and it was bitterly cold, so that I could not sleep. We had everything on, so as to be ready for a call instantly, and without so much as a blanket I was thoroughly miserable. Instead of having three days off we were ordered to go into a fresh lot of trenches, and next afternoon we marched into them and there we stayed for six weeks, coming out seven or eight times. In these trenches we were in dug-outs, so that we got a change from standing sometimes hip-deep in mud and water by getting into the dug-out and resting there. A dug-out was simply a hole made in the side of the trench, high enough to be fairly dry and comfortable.
During the whole of these six weeks it meant practically death to show yourself, and so merciless was the fire that for the whole of the time a dead German soldier was lying on the ground about a hundred yards away from us. He was there when we went and was still there when we left. We could not send out a party to bury him and the Germans themselves never troubled about the poor beggar. One day a chum of mine, named Tobin, was on the look-out when his rifle suddenly cracked, and he turned round and said, “I’ve hit one.” And so he had, for he had knocked a German over not far away and no doubt killed him.