I was wounded at Ypres—badly bruised in the back by a piece of a “Jack Johnson.” There is nothing strange in that, and people have got used to hearing of these German shells; but the main thing about this particular customer was that it was the only one that burst out of eighteen “Jack Johnsons” I counted at one time. If the other seventeen had blown up, I and a lot more of the Durhams would not have been left alive. That same shell killed two of my comrades.
We went into action very soon after leaving England. We had had plenty of tough marching, and on the way we grew accustomed to the terrible evidences of the Germans’ outrages.
In one place, going towards Coulommiers, we came across tracks of the German hosts. They had ravaged and destroyed wherever they had passed, and amongst other sights our battalion saw were the bodies of two young girls who had been murdered. The men didn’t say much when they set eyes on that, but they marched a good deal quicker, and so far from feeling any fear about meeting the Germans, the sole wish was to get at them.
After a four days’ march we got to Coulommiers, where we came up with the French, who had been holding the Germans back and doing fine work. That was in the middle of September, when the Battle of the Aisne was in full swing. On the 19th we went into the trenches, and after a spell in them we were billeted in a house. We had settled down nicely and comfortably, when crash came a shell, and so tremendous was the mischief it did that we had only just time to make a rush and clear out before the house collapsed.
It just sort of fell down, as if it was tired out, and what had been our billet was a gaping ruin. That was the kind of damage which was being done in all directions, and it told with sorry effect on those who were not so lucky as we had been, and were buried in the smash. All the cellars were crowded with people who had taken refuge in them, and they lived in a state of terror and misery during these continuous bombardments by German guns.
After that lively bit of billeting we returned to the trenches, and on Sunday, the 20th, with the West Yorkshires on our right, we were in the very thick of heavy fighting. The artillery on both sides was firing furiously, and the rifles were constantly going. Our own fire from the trenches was doing very heavy mischief amongst the Germans, and they were losing men at such a rate that it was clear to them that they would have to take some means of stopping it, or get so badly mauled that they could not keep the fight going.
Suddenly there was a curious lull in the fighting and we saw that a perfect horde of the Germans were marching up to the West Yorkshires, carrying a huge flag of truce.
It was a welcome sight, and we thought, “Here’s a bit of pie for the Tykes—they must have been doing good.” They had lost heavily, but it seemed from this signal of surrender that they were to be rewarded for their losses.
A large party of the West Yorkshires went out to meet the Germans with the flag, and I watched them go up until they were within fifty yards of the enemy. I never suspected that anything wrong would happen, nor did the West Yorkshires, for the surrender appeared to be a fair and aboveboard business.
When only that short distance separated the Germans and the West Yorkshires, the leading files of the surrender party fell apart like clockwork and there were revealed to us, behind the flag of truce, stretchers with machine-guns on them, and these guns were set to work at point-blank range on the West Yorkshires, who, utterly surprised and unprepared, were simply mown down, and suffered fearfully before they could pull themselves together.