Brewster 'A Glimpse of War through a Private's Eyes', a retrospective account of experiences in World War I, 1915-1917 / John James Brewster - Page 183
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[Page 183]
What a difference it would have made if all the time spent in useless Drill by Numbers (similar to raw recruits) in Egypt had been devoted to teaching every man to be a Machine Gummer & bomb thrower.
During the night the continual noise was so great that ordinary speech could not be heard in the "open", and one of the men on sentry got quite annoyed at the efforts of a man in the bottom of the trench, to speak to him, as he said, in a whisper.
What are you mumbling down there for?
What the deuce are you trying to say?
Why the [dash] dont you yell out?
His reason was apparent! He wanted to know why the NCO in charge of the bay was always "stuck in" the dug out instead of watching how things were going on.
The Sentry laughed in spite of his annoyance but replied are you frightened? If so you had better get into the dug out too! But if not what the d[dash] do you want to worry about the NCO for? If he is frightened, he is far better in there, than out here, for both himself & us.
The man afterwards told the Sentry he ought to have been a little more sympathetic-to-him.
As might be expected the Doctors & AMC men soon became so overworked that it was impossible to attend to more cases, so that after about the first hour all men wounded had to be looked after as well as possible by the men and the best that could be was, done, but when a man in the next "bay" had a leg blown off a messenger was despatched to the Dressing station for help, but unavailingly however later on another messenger was successful in bringing back help, but the man had to be dressed to stop the bleeding & left lying, so pressing were the calls for the services of the Medical Staff.
To show when excited how some men do not think. An Officer who was to go over the top with a platoon turned to a Corporal in Charge of a party of bombers who were also to take their places