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Updated: May 3, 2025
Waggon Hill is a long, high spur of Cæsar's Camp, running out south-west between Long Valley and Bester's Farm. At the extremity, as I have described, are the great gun-pits prepared for "Lady Anne" and a Naval 12-pounder some weeks ago.
The American rifle swung quickly and the grenade-thrower pitched forward with the grunt of a man struck heavily in the stomach pit. The German major blew his whistle. Out of their gun-pits the Germans came around from behind trees up from the brush on either side. They were unbuckling cartridge belts and throwing them and their side-arms away. York did not move from his position in the brush.
But there wasn't any tree for me, so I just sat in the mud and used my rifle, shooting at the machine gunners." The officers recall his quaint and memorable answer to the inquiry on the tactics he used to defend himself against the Boche who were in the gun-pits, shooting at him from behind trees and crawling for him through the brush.
About halfway down the hill as they came to him, he halted them, and he watched the gun-pits for the movement of anyone left skulking there. His eye went cautiously over the new prisoners to see that all side-arms had been thrown away. The surrender was genuine. There were about ninety Germans before him with their hands in air. This gave him over a hundred prisoners.
Many of our field-gun batteries had taken up their position near by: they had turned old shell-holes into gun-pits occasionally a burst of firing rang out, and Bosche was doing his level best to find them with his 5.9 crump. Here I managed to obtain several very interesting scenes.
All day about half the summit was in their possession. Three times they actually occupied the gun-pits and had to be driven out again. Leaning their rifles over the parapets they fired into the space inside. It was so that Major Miller-Wallnutt, of the Gordons, was killed.
I was at pains to examine the Mosque and the immediate surroundings, and the photographs I took are proof that the wreckage of this church came from artillery fired from the east and north, the direction of the Turkish gun-pits. It is possible we are apt to be a little too sentimental about the destruction in war of a place of worship.
After waiting five minutes we continued our walk, and crossing a valley dotted with abandoned gun-pits and shallow dug-outs, came to a shrub-covered bank from which a battery was pulling out its guns. "Our headquarters will be here," said the colonel succinctly. "Hubbard has been sorting things out. There are dug-outs along the bank, and I expect we shall find something in the trench down there."
When I mentioned German gun-pits the captain responded with more helpful suggestions. "It's difficult finding your way across country, because the trenches wind about so, but follow this trench as it curves to the right, and when you come to an old British dug-out blown right in, go due north across country; then you'll come to the railway," he said.
The Oxfords, on their left, had been completely hung up, and were barely beyond our front line. Two platoons of C Company pushed up northwards into the gap at 11.30, but found only small parties of the enemy, who enfiladed them at close range from some disused gun-pits 200 yards west of the Poelcapelle road.
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