HANGING ON
About fifty yards to the rear of us was a huge pile of bricks, fully
a hundred yards long by thirty feet high. The ground we were
occupying had originally been a brick yard and these bricks had been
put out to dry, but the war coming on they had been left and had
gradually settled down into a solid mass.
Someone was rash enough to show himself for a second near the brick
pile, and it was his last second. It had become a joke that they
would snipe at you with a fifteen-pound shell at Ypres, and the
Boches evidently imagined there were men near the brick pile, for
they took one shot as a sighter and then turned their heaviest field
guns on it. The huge pile looked strong enough to last for a week,
yet by night it was a crumbling powder.
This added a very disagreeable fury to the bombardment. The huge
shells would burst with a crumbling crash, a great sheet of flame
would flicker for an instant, then from out the pall of acrid smoke,
flying bricks would hurtle for yards. Dozens of them flew back into
our trench and I still bear the marks on my back and hands where
flying pieces of brick caught me.
Several men were killed by these curious missiles, while all of us
were bleeding from cuts and scratches caused by the wounds.
On went the bombardment and nothing seemed to exist but a riot of
noise, flying shrapnel, flashes, and the steady drizzle of the rain.
Twice during the day we stood to retire, but each time the major sent
word that, "We are holding on and we can hold them 'till the cows
come home."
Luckily, owing to the heroism of our signalers, the line to
headquarters remained intact. These fine boys repaired the line time
and again under shell and machine gun fire of the fiercest nature.
One fellow earned the V.C. a dozen times during the day; he exposed
himself recklessly, working with all his might in the very heart of
the German barrage. He is still living, but was badly hurt later on
at Festubert.
Toward evening we managed to get the wounded out and were I to tell
the entire story of the self-sacrifice of the boys, it alone would
fill a larger volume than this. They were obliged to carry the
wounded along an old communication trench about six feet deep, with
mud two feet deep at the bottom, then emerge into the shell-swept
open for a distance of two or three hundred yards. Curiously enough,
very few of the wounded were again hit traveling this road, and
"Long" Mitchell, a boy from Michigan, and another boy, Manville, from
Prince Albert, walked time and again down that highway of hell with
their wounded comrades. Apparently they did not know the sheer
heroism of their tasks, and probably don't know to this day.