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[Page 12]
Our job was to dig a communication trench just ahead of the captured German front line.
Under Fire "Baptism" (from Diary)
Millions of indirect bullets were whistling overhead, as well as the whistling whining and screaming of our Artillery's incessant drum-fire. It sounded like pleasant music to our strained hearing. That was because we were advancing. In front continuus clouds of smoke and dust hid the view. All round was stark desolation and Death. Trenches levelled with the ground. The ground ploughed and torn about and dotted all over with enormous shell-holes, as far as the eye could reach, in many of which were grey huddled figures twisted and distorte and sickly pale in death. Some khaki too. Some half-buried only to be found later by his shells. Only to be unearthed again and buried again. But it saved our pioneers a job.
It was about 9 o'clock am and we were still digging. There was no time to eat. Presently Whitt! ! Whitt! was heard on the mud on the parapet. Come Fritz! with a machine gun in a shell hole were souping at us. They had been passed over in the confusion of the early morning "Hop over.
"Keep down" ! " The corner of the traverse" after a while one of the three men in the traverse stood up to straighten his aching back. "Pop! Pop! ping ! ping-g-g! He received his Blighty all right with two bullets in the