I got so that shells all around me did not bother me, but let one come in my direction and this extra sense seemed to know it, and I would be flat on the ground before I had time to think about it.
It was at Belloy-en-Santerre, on the Somme, July 2, 1916, that I had a chance to ease my conscience for the way I had acted as a green recruit. Everything was made ready for an assault by our troops. The town had been literally knocked to pieces.
There was a wide strip of terrain between the trenches at this point, but all of us were by now accustomed to feel the breath of death against our cheeks, and when the big guns stopped roaring there came the familiar "En avant, mes enfants! On les aura!" We leaped over the parapets and tore across at them.
The artillery had made their first-line trenches almost untenable. The only men left in them were the machine gun operators in their heavily armored turrets and they kept spraying devastation among our legs until some of the boys got round behind and threw grenades into the turrets. After that the machine guns were quiet.
We reorganized when we had reached the first defences. I don't know how many of the boys were flattened out against the ground behind us, but I do know that several companies had to be consolidated to make one.
Then we swarmed over to the next defence line and stabbed and slashed and threw grenades. Parties of us ran to the bombproofs and threw in everything explosive that we had, and let me tell you that, all stories to the contrary notwithstanding, I never knew of anybody going down into a bombproof and being stabbed by Prussians who said they were wounded and needed help, because nobody ever goes into a bombproof to see until they have thrown grenades in and all is quiet. It would be foolish to do otherwise.
As I have said before, it is a rotten war any way you look at it.
IV—WHEN THE BOCHES THROW GAS BOMBS
Well, after the attack we held the first two lines of trenches. When I went off duty after being on outpost I simply lay down in the mud and mess of things and slept. I waked up coughing and wracking as if my body were going to burst.