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It was no less a service to his country and to mankind than the service of the soldier fighting in the trenches. When he saw the need and heard the call he was willing enough to sacrifice personal ambitions that he might help others to become finer, better men, and live nobler happier lives.
To carry these guns and all the necessary ammunition across this desert was a long and very exhausting process. Occasional bursts of machine-gun fire and spent bullets "zipping" into the mud all around hardly tended to cheer the proceedings. The path along to the right-hand set of trenches, where I knew a couple of guns must go, was lavishly strewn with dead cows and pigs.
One man tried to run there and was hit a few yards from them; another had better luck and got there safely, through a perfect stream of bullets from three guns. 2nd Lieut. Cosgrove himself was badly wounded and had to be carried out, so also was Serjt. Muggleston. The others, some crawling and some running, gradually collected in the two trenches and remained there for the rest of the day.
Not one, but dozens of assaults were made either upon the Mort Homme and Hill 304 positions, or upon the plateau of Douaumont, extending at times to the farm of Thiaumont, and later, after weeks and weeks of conflict, to the fort of Vaux and the trenches south of it.
Out of the two small parties, fourteen were killed and forty-seven were wounded. When the soldiers, overwhelmed by the terrific fire of the batteries, retreated towards the trenches, several officers and men were left behind wounded, and endured fearful agonies for hours, without a drop of water or a cheering voice to comfort them.
Julien, rifle in hand, fighting like a hero. In the first trenches we occupied the line consisted of two rows of parapets. The front one was called the parapet, the rear the parado. The latter was to protect the men from the "kick back" of the German high explosive shells.
And then, as we were congratulating him on having escaped with a whole skin, and breathing more freely at the thought he turned slowly and came straight up towards those guns again. The Australians holding the trenches were delighted. "My word, he's got more guts than what I have," said one.
As my visit was made during a lull in the fighting, conditions were more than usually favourable. There was no congestion. On a bright afternoon early in March I went to the railway station three miles behind the trenches at E . Only a mile away a town was being shelled. One could look across the fields at the changing roof line, at a church steeple that had so far escaped.
And there, on the opposite slope, the black and brown geysers were beginning to spout up from the German trenches; and from the batteries above them came the puff and roar of retaliation.
The boat we went by was the same little side-wheeler we had come down on, crowded with wounded now, mud-stained, blood-stained, just as they had come from the trenches across the water, with no place to lie but the bare deck. The stifling hold was packed with them; they curled up about the engine-room gratings for it was cold that night yet there was no complaint.
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