That is hard to tell; but I have been here two weeks already, and I suppose that I shall be here for at least six weeks longer.
I keep the piece of shell which struck me, in a bit of brown paper in the cupboard near the head of the bed. I cannot rise to get it myself, but if you will open the little door you will find it. It’s the sort of thing which caused such havoc in the Hartlepools when the German warships came and bombarded us.
CHAPTER XVI
CAMPAIGNING WITH THE HIGHLANDERS
[The Highland regiments have made a great impression upon the Germans since the war began, and the kilted troops have added to their laurels in the field. This story of fighting with the Highlanders is told by Private A. Veness, 2nd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders, who was wounded and invalided home.]
I have served eight years in the Seaforth Highlanders. To begin with I was a bandsman, but when the war broke out and I was recalled to the colours, I became an ordinary private, and the only music that the Germans heard me play was the rattle of my rifle. When we landed in France and marched off to the front the girls seemed to have a special fancy for the kilted men—at any rate they crowded up and hugged and kissed those they could get hold of; so we went off in very good spirits, singing and whistling popular tunes, not forgetting the Marseillaise and “Tipperary.”
Being a strange country we saw a good many things that were new and very strange to us till we got used to them. One amusing incident happened as soon as we were in Belgium, and that was the sight of a big fat man being pulled in a little cart by two dogs. It was funny, but still it made us angry, for we rather looked upon it as cruelty to animals; so we shouted, “Lazy brute!” “Get out and give the dogs a ride!” and so on, and I daresay the man was greatly surprised, though he didn’t know what we were saying. In a little while we understood that dogs are extensively used for haulage purposes in Belgium and we ceased to take any special notice of them.
It was not long after landing before we were told to be ready for the Germans, but that proved a false alarm. We were, however, to get our baptism of fire in a dramatic fashion, and that baptism naturally dwells in my mind more vividly than many of the far bigger things which happened later in the war.
A terrific thunderstorm broke, and a party of us were ordered to billet in a barn. We climbed up into a loft and began to make ourselves comfortable and to make some tea. We had scarcely got the welcome tea to our lips when the hurried order came to clear out of the building, and into the thunderstorm we dashed. Then the German shells began to fly and burst, and in a few minutes the barn was struck and shattered, so that we had a very narrow escape.
It was at this stage that we had our first man killed. He was a chum of mine, a bandsman, named Dougal McKinnon. While we were having our tea Dougal was under cover in the trenches, in front of the barn, with his company. They were under shell fire, and he was killed by bursting shrapnel. He was buried close to the spot where he fell, and being the first of our men to be killed in action we felt it very deeply. Many times after that, when our chums were killed, we had to leave them, because we had no time to bury them.
We got on the move, and when night came it was awful to see the whole countryside lit up with the flames of burning buildings—farms and houses and other places which had been set on fire by the Germans. There was a farm which was blazing furiously and I shall never forget it, for the good reason that in marching we managed to circle it three times before we could get properly on the march and go ahead.