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 463
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[Page 463]
to bother his legs.
While this attack was on the men could not understand where the Huns had disappeared to. They were naturally expected to pass through the village & the "Wood", & then up over the long ridge in front of the wood, during which the men were looking forward to having some rare pot shooting but much to their chagrin were sadly disappointed the Huns appeared to have, very mysteriously, but surely, vanished.
Not a Hun was seen running up the wheat field to the ridge after the village had been cleared & the wood, the objective, taken The estimate given was that 2000 Huns had been located in the trench the village & the Wood & yet not one was to be seen after "flying" across the open ground between the trench & the village & wood.
Not until daylight dawned could an explanation be given.
Then it could be seen that the Huns by rushing through the village & wood had dropped into a sunken road & by that means had doubled back towards the original trench low down on the right flank, then up over the ridge by another sunken road which owing to the darkness was hidden by a dense line of trees & scrub.
Had these details been made known to the men the whole or nearly the whole of these Huns could have been either killed or captured instead of paltry few prisoners
Half way up this hidden sunken road in among the trees 4 machine guns were noticed to be firing every now & then, but when about 300 men at once gave them "rapid fire" for about 20 minutes their firing intervals were very much curtailed. Unfortunately they were beyond the objective otherwise they would have been cleared out in a "jiffy".
When these men opened rapid fire they took up a position between the trench & the village in a field which