I got back into the grass and made my way downstream. Sliding
gently through the grass, I kept catching my feet in something hard
that felt like roots; but there were no trees in the neighborhood.
I reached down and groped in the grass and brought up a human rib.
The place was full of them, and skulls. Stooping, I could see them,
grinning up out of the dusk, hundreds of them. I learned afterwards
that this was called the Valley of Death. Early in the war several
thousand Zouaves had perished there, and no attempt had been made
to bury them.
After getting out of the skeletons, I scouted along downstream and
presently heard the low voices of Germans. Evidently they had found
the net and planned to get the messages first. Creeping to the edge
of the grass, I peeped out. I was opposite the bottle trap. I could
dimly make out the forms of two men standing on the nearer end of
the plank bridge. They were, I should judge, about ten yards away,
and they hadn't heard me. I got out a Mills, pulled the pin, and
pitched it. The bomb exploded, perhaps five feet this side of the
men. One dropped, and the other ran.
After a short wait I ran over to the German. I searched him for
papers, found none, and rolled him into the river.
After a few days in the Quarries we were moved to what was known as
the Warren, so called because the works resembled a rabbit warren.
This was on the lower side and to the left end of Vimy Ridge, and
was extra dangerous. It did seem as though each place was worse
than the last. The Warren was a regular network of trenches,
burrows, and funk holes, and we needed them all.
The position was downhill from the Huns, and they kept sending over
and down a continuous stream of "pip-squeaks", "whiz-bangs", and
"minnies." The "pip-squeak" is a shell that starts with a silly
"pip", goes on with a sillier "squeeeeee", and goes off with a
man's-size bang.
The "whiz-bang" starts with a rough whirr like a flushing cock
partridge, and goes off on contact with a tremendous bang. It is
not as dangerous as it sounds, but bad enough.
The "minnie" is about the size of a two-gallon kerosene can, and
comes somersaulting over in a high arc and is concentrated death
and destruction when it lands. It has one virtue--you can see it
coming and dodge, and at night it most considerately leaves a trail
of sparks.
The Boche served us full portions of all three of these man-killers
in the Warren and kept us ducking in and out pretty much all the
time, night and day.
I was lucky enough after the first day to be put on sappers' duty.
The Sappers, or Engineers, are the men whose duty it is to run
mines under No Man's Land and plant huge quantities of explosives.
There was a great amount of mining going on all the time at Vimy
Ridge from both sides.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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