I am glad to see so many of our boys recommended for rewards of various
kinds and mentioned in dispatches. What I fear is that one-tenth of
the brave deeds done by men in the ordinary course of their duty will
never be heard of. Many of the men themselves are so modest that they
can’t bear the publicity associated with it, and I had a man come to me
with tears in his eyes to beg me not to tell any officer what he had
done. He was lying in the trenches one day with a mug of milk that he
had brought from a farm under fire, when he noticed a wounded Dorset
casting eyes at it. Though he was sorely in need of it himself, he got
up and said, “You have it, old chap. I’ll get another.” Out he raced
through the terrible storm of shot and shell, and came back again white
as a sheet, with another mug in his trembling hand. He had been hit
badly in coming back: _A Sergeant of the Liverpool Regiment_.
“Shifting Them!”
One morning, just about cockcrow, there was a fearful din outside
our more or less private apartments in the trenches, where I had been
snatching two winks after three days and nights’ hard. The Germans were
on us, and two minutes after the alarm we were under fire. They had
crept up very close under cover of darkness, and were in trenches not
more than three hundred yards away. They must have driven out our chaps
who were in them, and we got orders to retake the trenches. There was
no fancy work about it. We were rushed forward in companies. One half
of each company would rush forward for a few yards, about twenty, while
the second half lay on the ground firing at the enemy. Then the first
half would lie down and fire while the second took up the running. In
that way we got to the trenches with very little loss, and commenced
shifting them in the way our chaps always shift undesirables from any
place we want. They were well entrenched, and it was like digging them
out with the bayonets. We got them out in the end: _A Corporal of the
Durham Light Infantry_.
Bullets and “Footer”
We are a light-hearted lot, and so are our officers. We dug out for
them a kind of a subterranean mess-room, where they took their meals.
One fellow decorated it with some cigarette cards and pictures he cut
out of a French paper. The food they get is not exactly what would
be supplied to them at the Hotel Cecil. A jollier and kinder lot you
would not meet in a day’s march. One officer, who was well stocked
with cigarettes, divided among his men, and we were able to repay him
for his kindness by digging him out from his mess-room. A number of
shells tore up the turf, and the roof and sides fell in like a castle
built of cards, burying him and two others. They were in a nice pickle,
but we got them out safe and sound. During the time we were in these
trenches nearly 500 shells burst over and around us, but, as the
protection was so good, not a single chap was killed, and less than a
dozen were wounded. When we were able to get into the open air once
more and stretch our legs, it was then we realized what we had been
subjected to, for the ground was literally strewn with burst shells.
If all goes well we are going to have a football match to-morrow, as I
have selected a team from our lot to play the Borderers, who are always
swanking what they can do: _Pte. Harris, West Kent Regiment_.