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[page 21]
39
(4).
loss. We are still having raids on the German trenches and giving him no peace - keeping him wondering where we are coming over next. This keeps him on the jump and must seriously affect his morale. Some of these raids have their humorous side. During our own Brigade raid a week or two back a party had been told off to bring back to our trenches any Germans which the attacking party had been able to capture. Crawling back across No Man's Land under fire one of our officers noticed that one man and his prisoner were not making progress, so he crawled back through the grass to see what was the matter. There he found one chap trying to make his prisoner crawl whith his hands up in the air! Naturally the Hun could make practically no progress without the aid of his hands to help him crawl but our brilliant escort couldn't see this and was jabbing him from behind with a pair of wire clippers in his efforts to make him move faster! The only unwounded Hun brought into our trenches that night was a subject of great interest. Everybody poked an electric torch into his face to see what he looked like, some drilled him at putting his hands up and down quickly, whilst others invited him to sing us the Hymn of Hate! In connection with that raid, the next night we put a notice board up in No Man's Land, where the Hun could read it in the morning with his glasses, giving him the condition of the prisoners we had taken, some having been wounded. The next night the Germans put out a notice which we were able to read in the morning, "Thanks for notice, your man wounded has every hope of recovery". This latter referred to a man we had to leave behind in the German trench, wounded.
The billets we are in now are further back than our previous position but still reachable by shells. The country is more open and we have a field or two in which to