United States or Burkina Faso ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sergeant Russel nightly pointed the muzzle of his Lewis-gun in the air and pulled the trigger, in the hope perhaps that Fritz might inadvertently sail into the track of his bullets. Unfortunately firing at so perpendicular an angle caused the lead to fall into the adjacent infantry lines and they they returned the compliment, although neither Battalion inflicted any "Blighty's" on the other.
On the 25th May we moved to a very much better area at Grand Rullecourt where we stayed for just a month. Here there were much better facilities for training, and we worked away steadily at wood fighting, fighting through crops, co-operation with tanks, and all the while paying special attention to the Lewis-gun personnel.
Savident ran alone into the centre of a roadway with his Lewis-gun and poured every solitary shot by him in one long sweep up and down the wavering lines. Rifles cracked with the rapid reloading action of marksmen until the barrels burned hot in the hand. The Germans fell back. The Normans went forward in that reckless rush. Rues Vertes was retaken!
Casualties increased, and of them Death claimed a singularly high proportion, one unfortunate Lewis-gun team coming in for a welter that shattered practically every man and ended two young lives in a fearful state of dismemberment. Wiring constitutes in itself an operation of fatal possibilities.
Gunners had the rare experience of circling their battery positions with barbed wire, and siting machine-guns for hand-to-hand protection of the 18 pdrs. and 4·5 hows.; and special instruction in musketry and Lewis-gun manipulation was given by infantry instructors.
One Lewis-gun team was lying about in all directions, forms distorted, limbs missing and great bare stretches of red flesh showing with sickening brilliancy of colour and the gun itself was UNTOUCHED. Irony of fate.
Before he could recover altitude the swift little scouts were up and into the formation. The air crackled with the sound of Lewis-gun fire, machines reeled and staggered like drunken men, Tam's fighting Morane dipped and dived, climbed and swerved in a wild bacchanalian dance.
Among the new arrivals were the 2/4th Oxfords, of whom all companies, followed until the end by cookers and Lewis-gun limbers, disposed themselves in or around Fayet, on whose north side stood a stone monument commemorative of local fighting in the Franco-Prussian War. Near to this monument was found a deep sunken road, broken with two huge craters.
As we progressed, very slowly by reason of clinging mud, F. informed us that this trench had been our old front line before we took Beaumont Hamel; and I noticed many things, as, clips of cartridges, unexploded bombs, Lewis-gun magazines, parts of a broken machine gun, and various odds and ends of accoutrements.
One section moved down the ridge on the right of the wadi, and took up a position at the point B. One section, with the junior officer, moved first along the wadi bed, and then, while it was still only half light, ascended the left-hand spur and took up a position at A. The Lewis-gun team occupied the hill at C. The remaining section, which had been kept in reserve at the hills about D, now moved forward and occupied Ikba.
Word Of The Day