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I could see that my opposite number with the megaphone was helpless, for the mistake which had swept my man into a shell-hole had reduced him to impotence. So with my megaphone I proceeded to change the battle order. I brought up the third wave to the front trenches. In about three minutes the men had recognized the professional touch and were moving smartly to my orders.
A Scottish unit has been alongside of the Australians for a considerable time. I was told that an Australian working party, while digging a forward trench, was sniped continually by a German machine-gunner out in front of his own line in a shell-hole. One or two men were hit. The line on the flank of the working party happened to be held by Scottish troops.
Usually one or two guns would do a little strafing every night: simply going out into the field in front of the building and setting up the gun in a convenient shell-hole. After a while, from our own observations and from information supplied by the artillery, we occasionally located an enemy battery within range of our guns. Then we would have a regular "strafing party."
For it was hellish, this place wrecked by high explosives and always under the fire of German guns. That any human being should be there passed all belief. From a shell-hole in a high wall I looked across the field of battle, where many of our best had died. The Tower Bridge of Loos stood grim and gaunt above the sterile fields.
Our Headquarters, therefore, cleared out a room on the first floor for a mess it had a carpet and other luxuries, and its only blemish was a shell-hole in the corner of the window. With great pride we invited Brigadiers and others to our new mess, until on the 17th of May the crash came.
I slithered along at about six miles an hour, sticking out my legs for a permanent scaffolding. Many troops were lying down at the side of the road. An officer in a strained voice just warned me in time for me to avoid a deep shell-hole by inches. I delivered my despatch to the General. Outside the house I found two or three officers I knew.
It was one of the many mysteries of a modern battlefield! Allen was going on all right: I saw him going on in front: I believe he got to Aviatik Farm! It was 10.20 a.m. when I was wounded. I lay in this shell-hole for some time. When I had been there about half an hour the enemy put down a barrage just on the line which contained my shell-hole! It was horrible. I thought I was lost this time.
We passed one team with two horses down; at another point an 18-pdr. had slipped into a shell-hole, and the air rang with staccato shouts of "Heave!" while two lines of men strained on the drag-ropes. We reached a damp valley that lay west of a stretch of tree-stumps and scrubby undergrowth remnants of what was a thick leafy wood before the hurricane bombardments of July 1916.
He and his infernal machines lay uneasily in their appointed shell-hole for some ten minutes, surrounded by Verey lights which shot suddenly into the sky with a disconcerting plop, described a graceful parabola, burst into dazzling flame, and fluttered sizzling down.
The spectacle was, indeed, majestic in the extreme, and if the British Government has not had it officially photographed in the finest possible manner, it has failed in a very obvious duty; detailed photographs of Ypres ought to be distributed throughout the world. My companions left me to myself. I sat down on the edge of a small shell-hole some distance in front of the Hospital.
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