When we entered Ypres it was a beautiful old cathedral city; now it is a shapeless mass of ruins, a melancholy centre of the longest and deadliest battle that has ever been fought in the history of the world. We had a rousing reception from the British troops who were already in the city, and a specially warm greeting from our own R.E. men, who gave me a huge quantity of pipes, tobacco and cigarettes from home, to divide amongst our company.
We were soon in the thick of the fiercest and most eventful part of the fighting. We were put to work digging trenches for the infantry and fixing up wire entanglements. The wire was in coils half a mile
long, and what with that and the barbs and the weight, the carrying and dragging and fixing was a truly fearsome job.
And not only that, but it was extremely dangerous, because we were constantly under fire—sometimes we were fixing up wire within a few hundred yards of the German lines. Before getting to Ypres we had covering parties of infantry to protect us from snipers and sudden attacks; but at Ypres this protection was rarely given, because of the very heavy pressure on the firing line. We were ceaselessly sniped; but on the whole our casualties were remarkably few—but we were always known as the “Lucky Company.”
In addition to doing this hard and dangerous work, we were roughing it with a vengeance. Our sleeping-quarters were dug-outs in a wood, and were lined with straw, when we could get it. The enemy always make a special point of “searching” woods with shells, and we were so situated that we were pestered day and night by the German gunners, who were hoping to draw our artillery fire and so locate our own batteries. Anything like rest was utterly out of the question owing to these artillery duels, which were the bane of our life.
Silence was essential for our work, and we used muffled mauls—our big wooden mallets.
One moonlight night we were going to our usual duties when a shell flew past, exploding with terrific force within ten paces of us. We took it to be one of the Germans’ random shots, but after going a short distance we had more shells bursting about us, and bullets whizzing, telling us that the enemy’s snipers were at it again. Once more we justified our nickname of the “Lucky Company,” for we had only one man hit—a fine chap, whose fighting qualities were well known to us, so we grinned when he said to me, after being struck on the shoulder, “I should like to have a look at that German, Bill!”