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Updated: May 3, 2025
The Huns didn't seem inclined to come close, and after a conference in my gun-pit with Mr Bliss, Mr Dawes asked for a volunteer to try and find the nearest infantry, and to tell them we'd hold on if they could engage the enemy and prevent him rushing us. I said I would try, and crawled on my belly, sir, through the grass to an empty trench.
He went through the rest of the action, and returned with the party, but must now retire for a week or so to Intombi Camp, for the Röntgen rays to discover the ball in his leg. It is thought to be a buckshot, or, rather, the steel ball of a bicycle bearing, fired from a sporting gun. General Hunter found a letter in the gun-pit.
More dangerous still was an old gun-pit which lay behind the left flank. The capture of this had been assigned to the 48th Division, but as a measure of abundant caution Colonel Wetherall had detailed a special Berks platoon to tackle it. This platoon, assisted by some Oxfords on the scene, captured the gun-pit and nearly seventy prisoners, but failed to garrison it.
"Major Mallaby-Kelby, the doctor, the adjutant, and myself can fix up under here," he said, pointing to a large tarpaulin fastened across the trench. "The signallers have got the mined dug-out round the corner, and you," he went on, referring to me, "had better start fixing Wilde and yourself up. We'll make that gun-pit with the camouflaged roofing into a mess to-morrow."
A couple of pioneers, lent to us by the colonel, who had shown himself so sympathetic in the matter of the lost dog, worked stolidly with plane and saw and foot-rule, improving our gun-pit mess by more expert carpentering than we could hope to possess.
He hasn't knocked him out yet, but he is going to next shot, which in a siege is the next best thing. In the meantime he has had his gun's name, "Lady Ellen," neatly carved on a stone and put up on his emplacement. Another gun-pit bears the golden legend "Princess Victoria Battery," on a board elegant beyond the dreams of suburban preparatory schools.
Hubbard, smiling happily, slipped out of our gun-pit mess, and the next item of news from this bit of front informed me that our valises had been replaced and the doctor's kit put outside. Hubbard told me he had informed the doctor and the gas officer that, our colonel having made his decision, he was prepared to repeat the performance every time they invaded the dug-out.
He noted that after he shot at a gun-pit, there was a break in the line of flame at that point, and an interval would pass before that gun would again be manned and become a source of danger to him.
They made straight for the sangar and formed in a circle round it, firing outwards without visible target. To their dismay they found the gun-pit empty. The gun had been removed perhaps for security, perhaps for the Sabbath rest. But it was soon discovered a few yards off, and the sappers set to work with their gun-cotton.
At 6.30 P.M. the orders arrived. We were to trek northwards, about four thousand yards as the crow flies, and be in touch with our C.R.A. early next morning. That night rain fell in torrents. When we had dined, and all the kit had been packed up, we sheltered in the gun-pit, awaiting our horses and the baggage-waggons.
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