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Updated: June 14, 2025
Eventually Lance-corporal M was the only one of my platoon left near me, and I shouted out to him, "Let's try and keep together." It was not long, however, before we also parted company. One thing I remember very well about this time, and that was that a hare jumped up and rushed towards and past me through the dry, yellowish grass, its eyes bulging with fear.
And so it came about that three months later Reginald Simpkins lance-corporal and Shorty Bill private were seated on the fire-step of a trench side by side. With one continuous droning roar the shells passed over their heads and crumped into the German lines opposite. The days of peace for the battalion were over; in a quarter of an hour they were going over the top.
He ordered me to go with him and help him draw the next day's rations, also told me to take my waterproof. Every evening, from each platoon or machine-gun section, a Lance-Corporal and Private goes to the Quartermaster-Sergeant at the Company Stores and draws rations for the following day. Many arguments take place between the "Quarter" and the platoon Non-Com, but the former always wins out.
Before long I met Corporal Livesey returning from his bombing stunt with about half a dozen prisoners and a shrapnel wound in his back; also another lance-corporal, from D Company, who had been on a similar stunt and was wounded in the ear by a bullet. Some of the prisoners were also wounded. So we all walked down together.
There is an almost entire absence of boasting or lying, and very little complaining. There is a general and obvious desire to allay anxiety. We are all "fine"; we are all "in the pink." "This is a grand life." Listen to Lance-Corporal M'Snape: Well, mother, I got your parcel, and the things was most welcome; but you must not send any more.
But my anxiety would have been worthless without the industry and enthusiasm of Lance-Corporal Kaye and Private Warburton, who managed every detail. At this stage in my history, when, almost reluctantly, I am drawing towards its close, there are many features of the Battalion life which crowd upon me in their demand for mention.
Rowlerson, one of C Company's platoon commanders, after reaching the German trenches, somehow lost touch and was captured with several of his men. In A Company an exploit was performed, which gained for the Battalion its second Victoria Cross. Lance-Corporal Wilcox came to close quarters with some enemy defending a piece of trench with four machine-guns.
I came out more than conqueror and recovered the stolen property; but the lanky young man was made lance-corporal next week, and it became part of his duty to instruct me in military exercises in which I was far more proficient than himself.
And so, in a dazed world of his own, Reginald Simpkins, Lance-Corporal and sometime pride of Mogg's, walked over No Man's Land. Every now and then he looked mechanically to his left and right, and grinned. At least he made a contortion with his facial muscles, which experience told him used to produce a grin. He did it to encourage the six.
The person addressed, a swarthy little boy wearing the uniform and stripe of a lance-corporal of the Twenty-first Canadian Machine Gun Section, took a long careful look around the sky, hastily swallowed a strip of bacon he had in his fingers and as he darted into a little "rabbit-burrow" sort of tunnel, flung back the words; "Hell, yes; this looks like a fine day for a murder."
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