Letter 68 From Private G. A. Turner, to His Father, Mr. J. W. Turner, of Leeds (Published in the “Leeds Mercury”)
I am still living, though a bit knocked about. I got a birthday present from the Kaiser. I was wounded on the 23rd. So it was a near thing, was it not? I got your letter at a place called Moroilles, in France, about five miles from Landrecies, where our troops have retired.
On Sunday, 23rd, we had rifle inspection at 11 a.m., and were ordered to fall in for bathing parade at 11.30. While we were waiting for another company to return from the river the Germans commenced to shell the town. We fell in about 1.0 p.m., an hour and a half afterwards, to go to the scene of the attack. Shells were bursting in the streets as we went. We crossed a bridge over the canal under artillery fire, and stood doing nothing behind a mill on the bank for some time.
Then someone cried out that the Germans were advancing along the canal bank, and our company were ordered to go along. We thought we were going to check the Germans, but we found out afterwards that a company of our own regiment were in position further along on the opposite side of the canal, and we were being sent out to reinforce them.
There was no means of crossing the canal at that point, so it was an impossibility. As soon as we started to move we were spotted by the Germans, who opened fire with their guns at about five hundred yards with shrapnel, and the scene that followed beggars description. Several of us were laid full length behind a wooden fence about half an inch thick. The German shells burst about three yards in front of it. It was blown to splinters in about ten minutes. None of us expected to get out alive.
They kept us there about an hour before they gave us the word to retire. I had just turned round to go back when I stopped one. It hits you with an awful thump, and I thought it had caught me at the bottom of the spine, as it numbed my legs for about half an hour.
When I found I could not walk I gave it up. Just after, I got my first view of the Germans. They were coming out of a wood about 400 yards away all in a heap together, so I thought as I was done for I would get a bit of my own back, and I started pumping a bit of lead into them.
I stuck there for about three-quarters of an hour, and fired all my own ammunition and a lot belonging to two more wounded men who were close to me—about 300 rounds altogether, and as it was such a good target I guess I accounted for a good lot of them.
Then I suddenly discovered I could walk, and so I set off to get back. I had to walk about 150 yards in the open, with shrapnel bursting around me all the way, but somehow or other I got back without catching another. It was more than I expected, I can assure you, and I laughed when I got in the shelter of the mill again.
I was very sorry to have to leave the other chaps who were wounded, but as I could only just limp along I could not help them in any way. They were brought in later by stretcher bearers.
A man who was at Paardeburg and Magersfontein, in South Africa, said they were nothing to what we got that Sunday. Out of 240 men of my company only about twenty were uninjured.