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Updated: May 21, 2025
The attack in our front died away and pretty soon another order came and we started down behind hedges and ditches back to Wiltje. The Germans were shelling the village for all they were worth and the church was burning, so we gave it a wide berth and slipped in behind the village and proceeded to dig in again.
Every few minutes the Huns would start shelling Wiltje and we would come into their "Zone of influence." The shells that missed the roofs of the houses from the north would pitch over into our lines and we had to duck and count ten when we heard them coming. While we were being jolly well shelled in these trenches an incident occurred which was of extraordinary interest.
Coe requisitioned a long bolster pillow from a ruined estament in Wiltje for me to sleep on. Another man brought in a few fresh eggs that some Flemish hens had laid in a henhouse in the outskirts of the village. The occupants of Wiltje had all disappeared. Some of them were dead in their cellars, which were not proof against the high explosive shells.
Major Marshall had a detachment in the trenches south of the storm-swept St. Julien Wood at Wiltje. When we reached the much-shelled village we found General Hull in charge and Colonel Burland and Colonel Loomis in a house on the north side of the road waiting for orders.
Huge "coal boxes," coming from the direction of Pilken, were falling in the village of Wiltje on our front. With a twang like a giant steel bow a shrapnel shell had burst overhead. They had commenced to spray us in the back with shrapnel from the direction of Hill 60, and one of the bullets that pattered like hail on our clay parapets had struck him.
Here and there a shell would fall in the ranks, but the regiment would only pull itself together and keep on. East of Wiltje a big shell fell and when the smoke cleared away Macdonald of the machine gun section, Ross Binkley, Broughall and Bickerstaff, four of the most popular young men in the battalion, great athletes and football players, had paid the price.
Major Marshall had met me at dusk, in the rear of St. Julien village to tell me that he had sent the men into headquarter trenches at Wiltje under Sergeant "Jock" Thomson, and that he could not find out anything about Captains Alexander and Cory. No officer in the division was more conscientious in his work and duty than Captain Alexander. Every man in his company worshipped him.
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