Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 131]
Further along was a dogcart full of medical stores which the men had been harnessing to the horse, the cart was upturned and everything else was dead. There were also many dead horses and men in different parts of the village. Fritz must have heard the noise on the 8th when the offensive began and was trying to get his stores away, he had left barrows full of stable manure behind, ( not that they were stores) so sudden did the deluge come. Now Framerville and Rainecourt are contiguous to one another, and Fritz was in the other end of Rainecourt so some of our officers decided to clean the place up. So they got our section together, and went to the crossroads that were in Rainecourt. The Lewis gunners were placed so as to sweep the main street and we were placed one each side of the other streets, while a party went hunting through the village. After we had been there some few minutes, a Fritz airplane came speeding over, and as it did so spit down a burst of machine gun bullets in the roadway, between me and the other fellow on the other side of the road. Just you wait "sonny", I thought to myself. In about 10 minutes there was a crash followed by 2 or 3 more and some clouds of brickdust and a sound of flying bricks. I saw the others leaving at the "toot" so I said this boy too, and I went more salvoes of whizzbangs and Minnewerfer, and bits of bricks flying, hurried my feet. Our lieutenant got a piece in the leg. He bombed and shelled it for a while after we were safe back in the orchard. I say safe for want of something better it wasn't so very safe. I left in such a hurry that I left my bandoliers and a waterbottle behind and went back to get them next day, but where I had been lying was a hole a foot deep in the Macadam, and my bandoliers and waterbottle were so smashed as to be useless, lucky I left when I did.