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[Page 16]
illuminate the surroundings almost like daylight. The consequence then is that we dont need to send any up and the absence of any on his side would prove something was "doing" - Red rockets breaking into separate lights for their artillery direction and amber coloured lights were going up constantly. Away on our right the Rap - rap - rap of an insistent machine-gun was sounding. Nothing is so like a boy hitting an empty case with a wooden board. I hated the sound of these machine guns. They sound human, being controlled by the touch of the gunner who fires in spurts or single shots at will. This is the way they sounded to me listening intently in the eerie darkness of midnight. Tap - (The gunner - "I believe I see something") tap, tap, tap, tap ("I believe I saw something") tap - tap - tap ("must have been mistaken") Tap tap tap tt --- ("Yes there they are") --- tap - tap - tap ("False Alarm"). And so you can imagine the conversation of the guns' crews whether friend or enemy.
The bullets whistle in a weird way, but not much notice is paid to bullets. I found myself under bombardment quite ignoring machine gun and rifle bullets until a near "ssweece" reminded me that they were dangerous. Intermittent bombardment by the enemy on our left and right fronts continued during the night, his guns through the mist making a peculiar wooden sound like a man hitting a solid log with an axe in the distance. During the night I slept a little in spite of the continual bombardment and my wet feet and legs and the cold. I found half a tin of Hoadley's Australian peach jam left by the Tommies we relieved and a tin of German bully beef (packed in Argentine) in the mud. These were a handsome addition to my already much depleted stock of bully beef and biscuits. There were some hot cinders in a brazier made of a German sniper's steel helmet left by the Tommies. This we coaxed into a small fire with the addition of some German bomb sticks, pieces of rifle stocks, and such flotsam as we could collect, carefully concealing it from the eye of the O/C. One of the chaps had a tin of Cadbury's cocoa, I mysteriously had a small packet of sugar, and we made a dixie full of strong cocoa, which we thoroughly enjoyed - the only
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