The Germans were then not more than eighty yards away from us, and our position was desperate. To make matters worse, the bridge by which we had to get across a neighbouring canal had been blown up, but as it happened the detonator on the overhead part of the bridge had not exploded, so that there was still a sort of communication across the water.
The bridge was full of wire entanglements and broken chains—a mass of metal wreckage—and the only way of crossing was to scramble along the ruins and crawl along what had been the iron parapet, which was only eight or nine inches wide. You will best understand what I mean if you imagine one of the iron bridges over the Thames destroyed, and that the principal thing left is the flat-topped iron side which you often see.
Under a terrible fire we made for the parapet and got on to it as best we could. I was the last man but one to get on to it. Just in front of me was Lance-corporal Gibson, and just behind me was Private Bailey.
With the Germans so near, so many of them, and keeping up such a heavy fire on us, you can imagine what it meant to crawl along a twisted parapet like that. The marvel is that a single one of us escaped, but a few of us did, which was no credit to the German marksmanship.
The bullets whizzed and whistled around us and very soon both the man in front of me and the man behind were struck.
The corporal was knocked straight over and disappeared. Bailey was shot through the instep, but he managed to hold on to the parapet, and to make a very singular request.
“Mont,” he said, “come and take my boot off!”
I turned round and saw what had happened to him; but, of course, it wasn’t possible to do what he asked, when it needed every bit of one’s strength and skill to hang on to the parapet and keep crawling, so I cried back, “Never mind about taking your boot off—come on!”
It was no use saying anything; poor chap, he would insist on having his boot off, so I said, “For Heaven’s sake get along, or we shall all get knocked over!” And with that I started to crawl again, and to get ahead as best I could.
The corporal, as I have said, had gone; he had been hit right between the shoulder-blades, and I just saw him roll over into the horrible barbed-wire entanglements.