Volume 2: Letters written on active service, M-W, 1914-1919 - Page 437
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[Page 437]
[This page was originally written in pencil. The first full sentence has been rewritten in ink. The rest of the page is still in pencil and has been struck through, but is transcribed here. See image for details.]
that's all.
So that rifle fire could be kept up till after we had got to the boats, some ingenuous devices were used.
The principal one was managed by charging a rifle. A string was then tied to the trigger & after running through a loop a can was tied to the end hanging down.
Above this tin can was another one with a hole in the bottom, so that after a certain amount of water had run from the upper can the weight in the bottom one pulled the trigger of the rifle. By different sized-tins and holes, difference in the time of discharging the rifle was brought about.
We destroyed a number of bombs but those kind which are set going by a friction tube were used a good deal by the men for making "booby traps".
The bomb would be made fast to a blanket etc. & buried in the ground a few inches. The idea was when Johnny Turk picked up the object, he sort of pulled a Xmas cracker. I suppose they pulled mostly prizes.
Understand, was not done by military orders & not for vindictiveness by the men. It was done as a sort of joke, I should imagine, as they would play at home only there it was intended to cause loss of life made lawful, by "civilized" people.