Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
The Boche knew quite well the time that vast and apparently never ending chain of traffic would be wending its nightly way from Poperinghe to Ypres. He shelled the great high road systematically every night. Every night some of those gallant men would go never to return. It seemed marvellous that so many could escape the destruction which was hurled at them; but war is full of wonders.
They would look around and then disappear. Perhaps they went to eat breakfast. Sometimes Coupeau would take everyone for a drink Boche, the two painters and any of Coupeau's friends who were nearby. This meant another afternoon wasted.
We were at the bottom. They'd have cut us to ribbons if we'd shown our carcasses in the open. Bruce was here, with a message he'd brought. The K.O. sent him back to headquarters for the reserves. The boche heavies and snipers and machine-guns all cut loose to stop him as he scooted up the hill. And a measly giant of a German police dog tried to kill him, too.
They'd come hover and inflict severe casualties on hour men. They can't see the Boche. We can. Should one Boche, or five 'undred try to come hover that parapet, one of us must immediately set hout and run back to hour trenches and give the warnin' for hour boys to be ready. The other one of us stays back 'ere, and with cold steel keeps back the rush." I nodded.
"If you'd like to go for a fly, and see if we can bag a Boche or two, I'm with you." "Against orders, Jack. I'd like to, but we were ordered here for rest and observation work; and you know, as well as I do, that obeying orders is just as important as sending a member of the Hun Flying Circus down where he can't do any more of his grandstand stunts.
We are free people; we can’t stand indefinite caging; we’ve got to have walking room once every few months." The staff officer murmured something. "I know; but good God, man! Four of us have been on this peak for nearly ten months. We’ve never seen a Boche, never heard a shot.
One of the companies engaged in the turning movement had paid the penalty of over-eagerness, and losing touch with a sister company had been badly enfiladed by German machine-gunners; but another company had rushed up to fill their place and the movement was progressing towards its appointed end. A dozen Boche prisoners were brought in, dirty, hollow-eyed, and furtive.
One soldier, asked what he had done in the fight, replied that he had "blown half a Boche officer's leg off with a bomb." The General thought this excellent, but wanted to know why he had chosen half an officer only, and not a whole one. We stayed ten days at Hesdigneul, and then moved to Drouvin and Vaudricourt, where the billets were better, and we were able to have a Battalion officers' mess.
At this instant, I see a Boche cannonaded at 2400, hence at 11.50 a boxing round necessary with a little Rumpler armed with two machine-guns. The pilot got a bullet in his lung; the passenger, who fired at me, got one in his knee. The two reservoirs were hit, and the whole machine took fire and tumbled down at Lignières, within our lines.
I hated turning out, apart from the cold; it seemed to be giving in to the Boche to a certain extent. I loved my charlady. She was the nearest approach to the cheery orderlies of those far away days in France, I had struck since I came over. Her smiling face, as she appeared at the door every morning with broom and coalscuttle, was a tonic in itself.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking