Living Nine Pins
“We went into the trenches on Saturday night last, and came out Thursday morning just before dawn. Four days and five nights practically without sleep, and being shelled by Jack Johnsons more or less the whole time. It is a one-sided game, with the odds with the artillery. We sit and hold a trench, being the nine pins while the guns roll the ball at you. You can do nothing but swear softly. No Germans actually attacked our trench, but they tried to do so on each side of us. But on Tuesday afternoon about 6.30 p.m. I got a little of my own back from them. I had just returned with a sack full of water bottles from a stream near by behind our trench, where we dodge snipers, when the call suddenly came for ‘Bomb throwers to the front’ and the rifles and machine guns started a terrific popping. I was in shirt sleeves, and just slammed on my ammunition equipment and skedaddled off with my rifle up the trench towards the racket, incited by a great eagerness to get into the thick of it.
“After a long time, as it was a long way, crouching and running and crawling I got to where I could see our men throwing bombs into the Germans. You could hear nothing for the noise, for it seemed as if every German rifle, Maxim, and big gun was turned on that spot; their shrapnel was going ‘Brrangg’ overhead and their shells going ‘Whangg’ all about. I took a few shots at the devils with my rifle, by way of resting and getting my breath, and then I got hold of a box of bombs and started to crawl and drag it up there. The box was heavy and, to my delight, another young chap, a Strathcona, came and helped me. We dragged and humped it along, over bumps and across shell holes and over our dead, until we got to the extreme point where the Germans were retreating up their trench and being bombed by our men unmercifully. There I found my own Sergeant of our bomb throwing squad, to my great relief.
“I had never thrown a live bomb in my life but soon found out, as it is quite a simple affair and they were lovely bombs for working. You could see a clump of German bayonets huddled like sheep, over their parapet top, and you chucked a bomb into it and prayed for the explosion. When it came the bayonets wavered and wabbled and then disappeared. If the bomb did not explode you waited and backed up because those plucky Germans lighted it again and threw it back. And so on and so on. I know I got 3 bombs into them fairly and squarely and heard them explode and saw the bayonets flop down. We finally got to a place at a turn in the trench, an angle, and our men, the —— something or other, were firing directly across us, excitedly of course, and they killed about 12 of our men there, two of them being of my squad and within a few feet of me, and two more were wounded. I was by that time about played out and the bombs were all exhausted, so we sat down to wait for more, and when they came I could not get up, for I had cramp in both of my legs and had to be rubbed and rubbed. That must have been about 8 p.m. But I could drag around, so I dressed two wounded men and helped to fill sand bags and pass them along until 10 p.m. I should judge. About 10.30 p.m. the only officer present told us the thing was over for the time and no more could be done, and we crawled back, as the rifles and Maxims and shrapnel and Jack Johnsons were just as busy all the time. The Sergeant and I got back to our own trench after 11 p.m. and I was more than tired. Never have I been so played out in my whole life. We lost three killed, two wounded, and another who went off his head later, out of nine, including the Sergeant, out of our bomb throwing squad. And I had not a scratch. Just a bump on the breast bone from something kicked up by a Jack Johnson. It was a bad thing for the Germans but we lost a lot of good men there.
“Our troop was 38 strong but now only 26 are left. We were in the foremost British trench of the British front here and our Troop had the post of honor. So we ought not to mind anything.”