“We went into the trenches on Saturday night last, and came out
Thursday morning just before dawn. Four days and five nights
practically without sleep, and being shelled by Jack Johnsons more or
less the whole time. It is a one-sided game, with the odds with the
artillery. We sit and hold a trench, being the nine pins while the guns
roll the ball at you. You can do nothing but swear softly. No Germans
actually attacked our trench, but they tried to do so on each side of
us. But on Tuesday afternoon about 6.30 p.m. I got a little of my own
back from them. I had just returned with a sack full of water bottles
from a stream near by behind our trench, where we dodge snipers, when
the call suddenly came for ‘Bomb throwers to the front’ and the rifles
and machine guns started a terrific popping. I was in shirt sleeves,
and just slammed on my ammunition equipment and skedaddled off with my
rifle up the trench towards the racket, incited by a great eagerness to
get into the thick of it.
“After a long time, as it was a long way, crouching and running and
crawling I got to where I could see our men throwing bombs into the
Germans. You could hear nothing for the noise, for it seemed as if
every German rifle, Maxim, and big gun was turned on that spot; their
shrapnel was going ‘Brrangg’ overhead and their shells going ‘Whangg’
all about. I took a few shots at the devils with my rifle, by way of
resting and getting my breath, and then I got hold of a box of bombs
and started to crawl and drag it up there. The box was heavy and, to
my delight, another young chap, a Strathcona, came and helped me. We
dragged and humped it along, over bumps and across shell holes and over
our dead, until we got to the extreme point where the Germans were
retreating up their trench and being bombed by our men unmercifully.
There I found my own Sergeant of our bomb throwing squad, to my great
relief.
“I had never thrown a live bomb in my life but soon found out, as it is
quite a simple affair and they were lovely bombs for working. You could
see a clump of German bayonets huddled like sheep, over their parapet
top, and you chucked a bomb into it and prayed for the explosion. When
it came the bayonets wavered and wabbled and then disappeared. If the
bomb did not explode you waited and backed up because those plucky
Germans lighted it again and threw it back. And so on and so on. I
_know_ I got 3 bombs into them fairly and squarely and heard them
explode and saw the bayonets flop down. We finally got to a place at a
turn in the trench, an angle, and our men, the —— something or other,
were firing directly across us, excitedly of course, and they killed
about 12 of our men there, two of them being of my squad and within a
few feet of me, and two more were wounded. I was by that time about
played out and the bombs were all exhausted, so we sat down to wait
for more, and when they came I could not get up, for I had cramp in
both of my legs and had to be rubbed and rubbed. That must have been
about 8 p.m. But I could drag around, so I dressed two wounded men and
helped to fill sand bags and pass them along until 10 p.m. I should
judge. About 10.30 p.m. the only officer present told us the thing was
over for the time and no more could be done, and we crawled back, as
the rifles and Maxims and shrapnel and Jack Johnsons were just as busy
all the time. The Sergeant and I got back to our own trench after 11
p.m. and I was more than tired. Never have I been so played out in my
whole life. We lost three killed, two wounded, and another who went off
his head later, out of nine, including the Sergeant, out of our bomb
throwing squad. And I had not a scratch. Just a bump on the breast bone
from something kicked up by a Jack Johnson. It was a bad thing for the
Germans but we lost a lot of good men there.
“Our troop was 38 strong but now only 26 are left. We were in the
foremost British trench of the British front here and our Troop had the
post of honor. So we ought not to mind anything.”
[Illustration:
_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._