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[page 34]
65
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heavy and unbroken fire from artillery and mine-throwers that it is not safe, and often it is impossible, to go out even at night to bring food and water. It is impossible to depend on telegraphic communication with the rear being maintained, so often are the wires cut and so dangerous and futile is it to repair them. It is this, that has led to a revival of carrier pigeon communication, not for long distances, but as the only dependable medium of communication from the front to the rear, a matter of a mile or so. As a means of communicating with our artillery we found them most useful and much more reliable than the rocket method of summoning artillery support.
` For the stretcher bearers, and the Red Cross workers in the advanced posts, every one has nothing but admiration. The stretcher bearers go about their work with an utter disregard for danger: they have their job to do and if they are killed, well, it can't be helped. Their own personal safety is the last thing they think of, all their thoughts being centred on getting their man back out of the danger zone and to the dressing station. Providence seems to watch over them. Time and again I have seen a stretcher party coming down a sap or down through the gully leading back to the dressing station when a shell or two would burst what appeared to be right amongst them. You would wait for the smoke to clear xxxxx xx expecting nothing but a bloody mass of human remains to be revealed, when out of the smoke would emerge the stretcher party quite unconcerned - they were'nt hit so they don't even trouble to look round and see what the shell did. Such luck, however, cannot always stand by them and on one occasion I remember seeing by the roadside the remains of what had been a stretcher party - three bearers a patient and a stretcher, the last sacrifice of the stretcher bearers and they make many.