A mile and a half crawl with five bullets in his body under
artillery and rifle fire was the experience of Private Dan Hurst of
the Coldstream Guards. Writing to his wife, Hurst says:
"Don't fret over me. I have five wounds, but I am a lucky chap to be
here to tell the tale, for if the shell which hit me in the chest
had exploded a bit lower I should have been killed outright. Our
ambulance men tried to get us away, but the Germans fired upon them,
so they had to leave us to take our chances. It rained in torrents
all that night and the Germans put sentries with bayonets over us.
They took all our food and water away, and on Tuesday afternoon
some of them tried to make out that we had been firing upon them. We
asked how that was possible when they had taken everything from us,
but they were going to shoot us when an officer came up and stopped
them.
"On Wednesday they removed us to the far side of a haystack out of
their line of fire so we could not get hit, but one of the British
shells exploded near us, and of course I got hit. We thought it best
to make a dash for it. I could not walk and had to crawl on my hands
and knees with my wounds bleeding, and while I was crawling away
they started to fire on us. There were six of us who started but
only two of us finished. Our trenches were only a mile and a half
away, but it took us four hours and a half to crawl there."