Soldiers' Stories of the War

by Unknown

Some of us rushed up and found that one of the boots of the woman had been ripped open, and that the child had been struck on the face and badly cut.

I picked her up, and saw that she was unconscious; but I got at my field-dressing and did all I could for her, and was thankful to find that she soon came back to her senses, though she was suffering terribly from shock and began to cry bitterly.

The mother also was dreadfully upset, but not seriously hurt. We lost no time in getting them into the underground part of a café near at hand, and there we had to leave them. I don’t know what became of them, but I suppose they were taken away. I often wonder what has happened to the poor little soul and her mother, victims, like so many thousands more, of the German invaders. I am glad to know that with our field-dressings we were able to help a good many civilians who were wounded.

The four cars I have mentioned were big transport-lorries, made specially for the war, and very fine work can be done with them. But how different the work is from that which we used to do at home as motor-drivers!—and I had a fair experience of that before I joined the Transport Service. There was as much difference between the two as there is between this war and the South African War, in which I served in the Imperial Yeomanry.

These lorries carried immense quantities of ammunition, and so the Germans made a special point of going for them, in the hope of bringing about a destructive explosion; but, taken on the whole, they had very poor luck that way.

When the order came to us in the Market Square at Ypres to march, we left the city and travelled along the roads till it was dark; and after that we returned to the city, taking the stuff with us. No sooner were we back in Ypres than the Germans started shelling again, after having ceased fire for about four hours.

What we carried was wanted for the guns, but we could not reach them, owing to the excessive danger from the German fire. It is a strange fact that as soon as any stuff was going through by transport the Germans started shelling it, which seems to show that they had word when transports were on the move. They shelled us constantly, and we got to take the thing as a very ordinary part of the day’s work.

It was only when some uncommon explosion occurred that we were roused to take notice; and such an event took place one day when one of the very biggest of the German shells burst in the air not far away from me with a tremendous crash, and made an immense cloud of awful smoke and rubbish as the fragments struck the ground.

This explosion was so near and so unusual that I thought I would get hold of a souvenir of it. And so I did. I secured a piece of the base of the shell, and meant to bring it home as a trophy; but I had to leave it, for the weight of the fragment was 95 lb., and that’s a trifle heavy even for a transport-driver. This was certainly one of the very biggest and most awful of the German shells of the immense number I saw explode.

There is, or was, a skittle-alley in Ypres, near the water-tower, and some of the Munsters were billeted there. I was near the place when some very heavy shelling was going on, and I saw one shell burst on the building with a terrific report. I knew at once that serious damage was done, and that there must have been a heavy loss of life, for I saw wounded and unwounded men rushing into the street from the ruined building. Some of the men were bandaging themselves as they rushed out. I knew that there must be a shocking sight inside the building; so when the commanding officer said, “Would you like to go inside and look at it?” I replied that I would rather not. And I was glad afterwards, for I learned that six poor fellows had been killed. That was the sort of thing which was constantly happening to our fighting men, and it was bad enough; but it was infinitely worse when the victims were women and children, as they so often were, and it was the sight of these innocent sufferers which was the hardest of all to bear. Some of our youngsters were particularly upset.