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Updated: May 8, 2025
There is a wild, confused luxuriance of growth more beautiful to my eye than anything which the care of man can produce. One old shell-hole of vast diameter has filled itself with forget-me-nots, and appears as a graceful basin of light blue flowers, held up as an atonement to heaven for the brutalities of man.
I knew every shell-hole in No Man's Land, and constant observation of the enemy methods enabled me to anticipate his moves. I felt that nowhere else would I be so successful.
In the center of No Man's Land was a wide, deep shell crater, caused by the explosion at that point of one of the largest shells used by the Germans. Crawling down between friendly and hostile lines, the sergeant made for this shell-hole. When still several feet away he held up a hand, whereupon Lieutenant De Verne gripped Prescott's leg.
Quentin was ablaze. The weather now changed for the worse. Hail, rain and snow prevailed alternately. A fierce wind blew. Winter conditions were repeated in the outpost line, where no shelter other than tarpaulins rigged across the shallow trenches existed. Nor was the artillery inactive. As the enemy's resistance stiffened, shells commenced to fall on fields yet unscarred by trench or shell-hole.
The poilus looked over the top of the shell-hole, and saw a swarm of those new fashion-plate soldiers, darting forward through the woods, throwing themselves down and shooting at the sockray Bosh.
With a muffled roar, the shell-hole suddenly, spouted its liquid contents and other débris straight to the heavens, startling them considerably and entirely obscuring their vision. A moment later, with an exultant yell, Angus M'Lachlan was upon them. He sprang into their vision out of the descending cascade a towering, terrible, kilted figure, bare-headed and Berserk mad.
He led them day after day gathering up Germans with the detached air of the man of science who is hunting for specimens. In whatever shell-hole he might chance to lunch he had his cloth spread and decorated with wild flowers plucked from the edge. If fate be kind to him he will go far. Apart from his valour he is admitted to be one of the most scientific soldiers of France.
Captain W k, wounded twice, had fallen into a shell-hole, while Sergeant S r had been killed during the preliminary bombardment. Men were kneeling and firing. I started back to see if I could bring them up, but they were too far away. I made a cup of my mouth and shouted, as J was shouting. We could not be heard. I turned round again and advanced to a gap in the German wire.
It must have shed upon him a ray just strong enough to make him a visible object; for, suddenly, ping! something hit him violently on the leg and bowled him over like a rabbit into a providential shell-hole. And there he lay quaking for a long time, while the lunacy of his adventure coarsely and unsentimentally revealed itself. As to the rest, he was in a state of befogged memory.
Sliding down the hill, diving from one shell-hole to another for already the German artillery had turned its attention to this new French position creeping along any fold in the ground which offered even the smallest shelter, Henri and Jules soon gained the woods, and plunged into them.
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