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He shoots him from point-blank range probably with a Colt. As he stands there with the dead officer in front of him, waiting, listening hard, wondering if he has been heard, he sees the two badges on the officer's coat. So, being a cool hand, he takes off the left one, puts it on his own coat, and disappears for a time. Quite easy; especially when the trenches are old German ones."
The four, as they skirted the Southern line, noticed no signs of further preparations by the Confederates. No men were throwing up earthworks or digging trenches. As well as they could surmise, the garrison, like the besieging army, was seeking shelter and rest, and from this fact the keen mind of Colonel Arthur Winchester divined that the defense was confused and headless.
In the obscurity of the gray dawn British troops quietly and suddenly dashed into the Germans and cleared the trenches with bayonets. This was accomplished in two minutes, when the large guns spread a curtain of fire over the Germans, inflicting severe losses. The German soldiers then attempted resolute counterattacks, but were repulsed with machine-gun fire.
All this time the Germans were industriously shelling the dugouts and supporting trenches where our supports were located and along the Gravenstafel Ridge. Huge shells fell like hail. Those that failed to burst in the air exploded the minute they struck the hard untilled clay of the fallow fields and fragments flew in every direction. One fell on the roadway about twenty feet away from me.
No sooner had we cleaned up the job than the Fritzies returned en masse formation, compelling us to beat a discretionary retreat to their front-line trenches, where we held and are still holding, and then some. Here we remained until the middle of the following month.
I had nothing to say in reply, and he went up in my opinion greatly. He knew it; and he said, with touching kindness, "Erema, come and see your dear aunt Mary. This is why you have not heard again from her. I have been in the trenches day and night, stoning out the sea with his own stones, by a new form of concrete discovered by myself.
The Confederate troops were almost naked, and had scarce food enough to sustain life. They fought still, in the trenches, along the great line of works, but it was plain, as Lee said, that the line was stretched so far, that a very little more would snap it. That line extended from the Williamsburg road, east of Richmond to Five Forks, west of Petersburg a distance of nearly fifty miles.
Meanwhile, the enemy's artillery was still active, and we suffered. 2nd Lieut. Callard, a most promising junior officer, was killed, and with him C.S.M. F. Johnson of "C" Company. 2nd Lieuts. Russell and Creed were both wounded, and six men killed and several wounded at the same time, nearly all by shells in the communication trenches.
The trenches were badly knocked about, and the German artillery and trench-mortars were still causing trouble. I now messed with D Company at their H.Q. in K.1.a. On the evening of April 10, I had to patrol the ground near the mine shaft with a party of bombers, to look out for a German spy who was thought to be making back this way. We saw nothing of him, but I believe that 2nd-Lieut.
He possessed great ability, knowledge, and experience, and was a great traveller, yet, with all this, his life was a series of disappointments and failures. His great friend, Michael Godfrey, who had worked so faithfully by his side, would, I am sure, never have forsaken him, but he was struck down by a ball in the trenches of Namur, in 1695, while seeking the king in my interests.
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