Leslie Harold Barry 'Memoirs of my experiences in Germany', November 1916-January 1918 - Page 6

[Page 6]

to let us know that we were not going to have things all our own way. Covering us on our left were a party of bombers, and in the night - lit up like day with the bursting shells - they could be seen being slowly driven back with answering bomb and machine gun fire. It was then that I met my "Waterloo" with a piece of bomb in my lung - sufficient with the ensuing hemorrage to make me unconscious for the rest of the night. However for the benefit of those who have not experienced the feeling, I would likfc to tell you that before I went "right out to it"
I felt very small and cheap, expecting that my resting place was to be in "NO MANS LAND" - right from my earliest childhood days did my misdemeanour come before me, I could only trust that the "man with the slate" hadn't everything written down.
      I came to in the early hours of the dawn and seeing a trench about thirty yards ahead of me, which I surmised was our own front line, I determined on reaching it - knowing that if I stayed in "no mans land" much longer I wouldn't have the strength to crawl a yard. Taking the chance - after about an hour's crawling - I reached it only to find that particular part untenanted, and having no fears, even though a german boot and shovel were staring me in the face,
I made my way up the trench - turned the first traverse to find myself looking down a couple of rifles with two big burly germane behind them. I sometimes wonder who was the most surprised — at all events it wasn't long before Fritz was on top of me with his bayonet touching my tunic, yabbering away for all his worth.     Thanks to the lucky star that
I must have been born under, a german commissioned officer appeared on the scene accompanied by an interpreter, Z was taken, stripped of my personal belongings, (which afterwards reached me at the Hospital) my wound was dressed by a couple of field ambulance men, and I was then questioned as to how I came to get into the trench. I was next put on an improvised stretcher and carried about two-hundred yards to a machine gun position immediately behind the front line. Whilst being carried I well remember being dropped twice owing to my carriers having to take cover from the English guns which were shelling their supports.     I lay all day in
this dug-out, receiving all the water I cared to drink, and taunts from a german Sergeant-major about our unsuccessful attack and as to how the Germans would soon be in Paris.
I might mention that even though I was partly unconscious