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Updated: May 27, 2025
The wire was exceptionally thick and strong and had not been destroyed by our fire and on it the enemy concentrated heavy machine-gun and trench-mortar fire. Casualties were heavy and at 12.15 p.m. the assaulting platoons, being unable to get through the wire, withdrew to their old line to allow the trench-mortar and machine-gun fire to be neutralised.
But doubtless the sappers have arranged all that. Some of these improvements are viewed by company officers without enthusiasm. The trench-mortar, for example, is distinctly unpopular, for it draws the enemy's fire, besides being an uncanny thing to handle, although the handling is done not by the company but by a "battery" of R.G.A. men, who come down and select a "pitch."
But at the end of the hour, the Asterisks, who had been hugely enjoying the performance, and particularly the cessation of German bombs, were horrified to hear a double report from the German trench, and to see two dark blobs fall twinkling from the sky. The following hour was a nightmare. Their trench-mortar was completely out-shot.
Flying-men and officers of all kinds waiting for trains crowded the Folkestone Hotel and restaurants, where they spent two hours over luncheon and three hours over dinner, drinking red wine, talking "shop" the shop of trench-mortar units, machine-gun sections, cavalry squadrons, air-fighting, gas schools, and anti-gas schools.
"She started at a quarter-past five in the morning, and went on till about ten." She is the most unpleasant of her sex, and her full name is Minenwerfer, or German trench-mortar. She resides, spasmodically, in Unter den Linden. Her extreme range is about two hundred yards, so she confines her attentions to front-line trenches.
Mist drifted fitfully around and hid, now and again, two derelict tanks, at which a forward post of my company was stationed. This post I was on my way to visit, when, suddenly, what seemed trench-mortar bombs began to fall. About twenty fell in a minute, the last ones very close to where I stood. They were gas.
I noticed several of our wounded men lying in shell-holes in "No Man's Land." They were calling for assistance. Every time a Red Cross man attempted to get near them, a hidden German machine-gun fired. Several were killed whilst trying to bring in the wounded. The cries of one poor fellow attracted the attention of a trench-mortar man.
Yes, one had the system in the large and the small, by the army, the corps, the division, the brigade, the battalion, and the man, the individual infantryman who was to suffer that hazard of marching in the open toward the trenches which not guns, or motor trucks, or trench-mortar shells could take, but only he could take and hold.
For 30 to 40 high explosive shells to fall all round a post was quite common. Sometimes a 'dud' would fall inside it, or a huge 'Minnie, which burst in the wire, cover the occupants with earth and splinters. The crash of these huge trench-mortar bombs was satanic; and there was always a next one to be waited for. Sometimes whole posts were wiped out.
And when our new trench-mortar batteries got to work too, at sixteen to the dozen, well, it was bad enough for us; but what it must have been like at the business end of things, Lord knows! For a few minutes I was almost a pro-Boche!" Other items of intelligence are gleaned. The weather was 'rotten': mud-caked garments corroborate this statement.
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