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Updated: May 8, 2025
"I told you we should probably meet," he replied, sheathing his sword, "but I was not prophetic enough to foretell the exact circumstances of the meeting." "Come along, my dear fellow," said I, seizing his arm and dragging him up-stairs; "how glad I am! what an unexpected oh! never mind the look of the room, it's pretty tight in most places, and I've stuffed my overcoat into the shell-hole."
With five Frenchmen, two of them wounded, he held the shell-hole for an hour; one of them ran back and staggered up with a supply of ammunition, and loaded up a rifle for Jimmie, and laid it so that he could manage it with one hand. So Jimmie went on shooting, half-dead, half-blind, half-choked with powder smoke.
He evidently had not got over his nervousness, for, after going about three-quarters of a mile, we ran into a large, partially filled shell-hole, burying the front wheels above the axle. To save myself from a second dive I clutched hold of the mitrailleuse. This was a position indeed!
'Shell-hole on the right, 'Shell-hole on the left, 'Shell-hole in the middle, 'Keep to your right' were being passed back continually. Progress was slow of course under these conditions and with the heavy loads that we all carried. But it was all so novel to me that I had not a moment to feel dull or depressed.
And oh, the beautiful business-like precision of these fashion-plate soldiers! They never said a word, they never even glanced about; they just threw themselves down at the edge of the shell-hole, and leaned their rifles over and set to work. You didn't need to see you could tell from the look on these men's faces that they were hitting something! Presently came two more, leaping in.
Every tree in a wood near by is torn and beheaded; hardly one has the top remaining. The new green pushes out amongst the blackened trunks. One speaks low in Nieuport, the place is so horribly dead. Mr. Bevan showed me a shell-hole 42 feet across, made by one single "soixante-quinze" shell.
All these theories are based on the assumption that the ground on a battle-field is level, free from obstructions and of a uniform degree of hardness; not one of which conditions ever exists. A small ditch, a log or stump or a water-filled shell-hole will make so much difference in the effect of the explosion of a shell or bomb that all efforts to prove anything by mathematics is a waste of time.
I suppose men and women lived in those valleys once; French farmers' girls tugged home at dusk up that ghostly roadway slow-footed, reluctant cows; I dare say they even made love French lads and sweethearts down some long obliterated path beside those willow stumps where the German patrol sneaks nightly from shell-hole to shell-hole.
They went over the bags at dawn, reached their objective in twenty minutes and scratched themselves in. The Padre rejoined them ten minutes later, very badly winded, but bringing a case of Woodbines along with him. My friend Patrick grabbed him by the leg and dragged him into a shell-hole.
After about five hours the C.O. sent a runner to find the padre and the M.O., alive or dead. The fellow traced us to our shell-hole, and when he saw our heads, he actually came to attention and saluted. 'The C.O. would like to see you in the Mess, sir, said he to me. 'And I should dearly like to see him in the Mess, said I. 'However, stand at ease. 'Stand at the devil, said the doctor.
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