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Updated: July 8, 2025
They would spend two or three weeks digging and fixing up a nice trench and then along would come the bombers and blow it all to smithereens no wonder the boys were sore at us; but then, they were getting practice, and we were only doing what "Fritzie" would do for them later on.
Explosions of these tremendous projectiles were deafening in the extreme, and here there were two or three of them exploding at once in our immediate neighborhood. Again we mounted on our way to Pozières and, when reaching our journey's end, Fritzie began pumping in his crying shells; these are the kind that draw copious tears, inflame the eyes and make things generally disagreeable.
As the car felt its way through the ghostly town, Barry was only vaguely conscious in the darkness of its ghostly skeletonlike ruins. Fifteen minutes brought them to the Menin gate. "Sounds rather hot out there," remarked the driver. "Well, Fritzie, I guess we won't join your party this time. We prefer to wait, if you don't mind, really."
There seemed to be no end of them. There came now a fellow whom he watched closely. He had blond hair and blue eyes, but no glasses. He looked something like something like oh, who? Fritzie Schmitt, whom he used to know in Bridgeboro. No, he didn't not so much. But his blond hair and blue eyes did not escape Mr. Conne. Nothing. "Watching, Tommy?" "Yes, sir."
At the end of seven days we were supposed to be sent back to rest billets, and another shift would take our place. Fritzie had been unusually quiet since we came, and we began to think that the stories we heard were greatly exaggerated. However, on the morning of the seventh day we changed our minds.
In the early mornings when the heavy night mists still concealed the lines, the boys stood head and shoulders above the parapet and shouted: "Hi, Fritzie!" And the greeting was returned: "Hi, Tommy!" Then we conversed. Very few of us knew German, but it is surprising how many Germans could speak English.
They told us that whole battalions of Canadians had been wiped out by shell fire. Fritzie had just blown everything to pieces before he advanced, just the same as he did at St. Éloi. We realized that our time on rest was likely to be cut short; so we got busy and spent all our money and sure enough, next day the order came for us to move, and away we went along the road to V just behind Ypres.
That night the Sergeant came along and said, "Goddard and Wilson, go out on listening-post." We looked at the spot where he wanted us to go. Fritzie was landing shells there about one a minute, and there was absolutely no protection. I said "Say, Sergeant, that's suicide!" "I know," said he, "but I have orders to put a post there."
I asked him. "'Eard a flute some Fritzie was a-playin' of. An' you ought to 'ave 'eard 'em a-singin'! Doleful as 'ell!" Several men were killed and wounded during the night. One of them was a sentry with whom I had been talking only a few moments before. He was standing on the firing-bench looking out into the darkness, when he fell back into the trench without a cry. It was a terrible wound.
Archer spotted the gleam of his rifle at some distance up near the provision gate, and he scurried in that direction to hold him with his usual engaging banter, for even glowering "Fritzie" was not altogether proof against young Archer's wiles and his extraordinary German. Meanwhile, Tom, first looking in every direction, slipped under the bushes and felt carefully of the wiring.
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