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The Corps Commander has promised to back you with every gun, trench-mortar, culverin, and arquebus in his possession." In due course Battalion Orders were issued and approved. They dealt with operations most barbarous amid localities of the most homelike sound. At this point they were to wait until Trafalgar Square had been suitably dealt with by a trench-mortar.
Bobby caught his breath. He was just nineteen, and this was his first encounter with sudden death. "Who is it?" he asked unsteadily. The corporal saluted. "Private M'Leary, sirr. That last shot from the trench-mortar got him. It came in kin' o' sideways. He was sittin' at the end of his dug-oot, gettin' his tea. Stretcher party, advance!"
The Bombing Officers of the 6th and 7th N.F. carried on the harassing fire with such effect that eventually the Germans took to sending showers of 'fishtails' whenever a rifle-grenade was loosed off. The 'fishtail' was a small trench-mortar bomb, which the Germans substituted for the rifle-grenade and used with great effect.
They look down upon our line, which runs along the side of the hill below them. The hill is all skinned and scarred, and the trace of the great works can no longer be followed. At the top of the hill, in the middle of a filthy big pool, is a ruined enemy trench-mortar, sitting up like a swollen toad. At the end of the spur the lines curve round to the east to shut in the hill.
The Germans brought up a trench-mortar next and flung noisy and nerve-wrecking high-explosive bombs into and all round the ruin, bursting down all the remaining walls except the sandbagged one and scoring a few more casualties until the forward trench installed a trench-mortar of their own, and by a generous return of two bombs to the enemy's one put the German out of action.
In front lay some wounded; on either side of them stakes and shreds of barbed wire twisted into weird contortions by the explosions of our trench-mortar bombs. Beyond this nothing but smoke, interspersed with the red of bursting bombs and shrapnel. From out this ghastly chaos crawled a familiar figure. It was that of Sergeant K , bleeding from a wound in the chest. He came crawling towards me.
On the remainder of the Trentino front there were patrol encounters and increased artillery activity. In the Travignola Valley of the Avisio, after trench-mortar preparation against the southern slopes of Cima di Bocche, the Austrians attacked toward Peneveggio. They were driven off. There were the usual artillery actions along the Julian front.
A bomb or a trench-mortar smashed one of his legs into a pulp of bloody flesh and splintered bone. Word was passed down to the field ambulance, and a surgeon came up, splashed to the neck in mud, with his instruments held high. The operation was done in the water, red with the blood of the wounded man, who was then brought down, less a leg, to the field hospital.
On the left near the Butte they signalled to our men in the trenches before a trench-mortar bombardment started, as if to warn them to take cover. On the right they were still more inclined to fraternise. Here both sides were holding trenches that would have become impossible if any sniping had been done.
You cannot hold the Salient for three months without paying for the distinction; and the regiment had paid its full share. Not so much in numbers, perhaps, as in quality. Stray bullets, whistling up and down the trenches, coming even obliquely from the rear, had exacted most grievous toll. Shells and trench-mortar bombs, taking us in flank, had extinguished many valuable lives.
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