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[Page 35]
spot where the ruins of the Cloth Hall reared itself among the piles of stone & brick which marked the position of the city. They immediately ducked down & a short time afterwards grinning faces appeared like so many rabbits right along their parapet. Although I made a good target no shot was fired & one of the first whom I had seen saluted & waved to me. These actions they kept up for some time until the evidently on the appearance must of an officer they all disappeared. This is the Saxon.
But we got a little more of the Saxon on the 3rd Early in the morning a tremendous explosion shook all the sleep from our eyes & caused us to "duck" round the corner of the traverse.
It was an oil can & bomb fired from the "minenwarfer".
These are clumsy looking affairs filled with a large quantity of H.E. bursting with a terrific report & and sending showers of burning phosphorous - the Germans latest weapon – streaming with scraps of iron, in all directions. Should they land in or near the trench their distinctive power is quite in keeping with their "bark". Not satisfied with these Fritz sent over numbers of the ordinary shell bombs "dumb.bells" & aerial torpedoes.
From this period on the evening mortars gave us a bad time until we were relieved on the morning of the 5th. We then proceeded to our rendezvous at Lille Gate at Ypres & from here we were taken to out billet in the Hospital of Notre Dame which lies on the northern side of the square within sight of the ruins of the Cloth Hall. However we did not remain long at this place shifting the same night to the Zellebeke Lake dugouts. This was until the 11th the centre of fatigue operation to the trenches when we "evacuated' – going into the Railway Reserve Line.
On the evening of the 13th we went out to the