What with the weather and the mud and the constant firing we had a very bad time. Each night we had four hours’ digging, which was excessively hard work, and if we were not digging we were fetching rations in for the company. These rations had to be fetched at night from carts three-quarters of a mile away, which was the nearest the drivers dare bring them. These expeditions were always interesting, because we never knew what we were going to get—sometimes it would be a fifty-pound tin of biscuits and sometimes a bag of letters or a lot of cigarettes, but whatever it was we took it to our dug-outs, just as animals take food to their holes, and the things were issued next morning.
One way and another we had between fifty and sixty men wounded in our own particular trenches, mostly by rifle fire, though occasionally a shell would burst near us and do a lot of mischief; and what was happening in our own trenches was taking place all around La Bassée. We should have suffered much more heavily if we had not been provided with periscopes, which have saved many a precious life and limb.
We paid very little attention to the German shell fire, and as for the “Jack Johnsons” we took them as much as a matter of course as we took our breakfast. Some of the German artillery fire actually amused us, and this was when they got their mortars to work. We could see the shot coming and often enough could dodge it, though frequently the great fat thing would drive into the ground and smother us with mud. For some of the German artillery fire we were really very thankful, because in their rage they were smashing up some farm buildings not far away from us. The cause of our gratitude was that this shelling saved us the trouble of cutting down and chopping firewood for warmth and cooking in the trenches. When night came we simply went to the farmhouse, and the firewood, in the shape of shattered doors and beams and furniture, was waiting for us. The farm people had left, so we were able to help ourselves to chickens, which we did, and a glorious change they were on the everlasting bully beef. A chicken doesn’t go very far with hungry soldiers, and on one occasion we had a chicken apiece, and remarkably good they were too, roasted in the trenches. Another great time was when we caught a little pig at the farm and killed it and took it to the trenches, where we cooked it.
When we had finished with the second lot of trenches we went into a third set, and I was there till I was wounded and sent home. These trenches were only about a hundred and twenty yards from the second lot, so that the whole of the three months I spent in trenches was passed in a very little area of ground, an experience which is so totally different from that of so many of our soldiers who were out at the war at the very beginning, and covered such great distances in marching from place to place and battle to battle. These chaps were lucky, because they got the change of scene and the excitement of big fighting, but the only change we had was in going out of one trench into another.
It was now the middle of December and bitter weather, but we were cheered up by the thought of Christmas, and found that things were getting much more lively than they had been. One night a splendid act was performed by Lieutenant Seckham, one of our platoon officers, and two of our privates, Cunningham and Harris.
An officer of the Royal Engineers had gone out to fix up some barbed wire entanglements in front of our trenches. The Germans were firing heavily at the time, and they must have either seen or heard the officer at work. They went for him and struck him down and there he lay in the open. To leave the trenches was a most perilous thing to do, but Mr. Seckham and the two men got out and on to the open ground, and bit by bit they made their way to the Engineer officer, got hold of him, and under a furious fire brought him right along and into our trench, and we gave a cheer which rang out in the night above the firing and told the Germans that their frantic efforts had failed. Mr. Seckham was a splendid officer in every way and we were greatly grieved when, not long afterwards, he was killed. Another of our fine young platoon officers, Lieutenant Townsend, has been killed since I came home.
We were so near the Germans at times that we could throw things at them and they could hurl things at us, and we both did, the things being little bombs, after the style of the old hand-grenade. We got up a bomb-throwing class and hurled our bombs; but it was not possible to throw them very far—only twenty-five yards or so. The West Yorkshires, who were near us, got a great many of these missiles thrown at them, but they did not all explode. One day a sergeant of ours—Jarvis—was out getting wood when he saw one of them lying on the ground. He picked it up and looked at it, then threw it down and instantly it exploded, and he had no fewer than forty-three wounds, mostly cuts, caused by the flying fragments, so that the bomb made a proper mess of him.
Our own bombs were made of ordinary pound jam tins, filled with explosive and so on, like a little shell, which, as the case of the sergeant showed, was not anything like as sweet a thing to get as jam. The
