“We went into the trenches on Saturday night last, and came out Thursday morning just before dawn. Four days and five nights practically without sleep, and being shelled by Jack Johnsons more or less the whole time. It is a one-sided game, with the odds with the artillery. We sit and hold a trench, being the nine pins while the guns roll the ball at you. You can do nothing but swear softly. No Germans actually attacked our trench, but they tried to do so on each side of us. But on Tuesday afternoon about 6.30 p.m. I got a little of my own back from them. I had just returned with a sack full of water bottles from a stream near by behind our trench, where we dodge snipers, when the call suddenly came for ‘Bomb throwers to the front’ and the rifles and machine guns started a terrific popping. I was in shirt sleeves, and just slammed on my ammunition equipment and skedaddled off with my rifle up the trench towards the racket, incited by a great eagerness to get into the thick of it. “After a long time, as it was a long way, crouching and running and crawling I got to where I could see our men throwing bombs into the Germans. You could hear nothing for the noise, for it seemed as if every German rifle, Maxim, and big gun was turned on that spot; their shrapnel was going ‘Brrangg’ overhead and their shells going ‘Whangg’ all about. I took a few shots at the devils with my rifle, by way of resting and getting my breath, and then I got hold of a box of bombs and started to crawl and drag it up there. The box was heavy and, to my delight, another young chap, a Strathcona, came and helped me. We dragged and humped it along, over bumps and across shell holes and over our dead, until we got to the extreme point where the Germans were retreating up their trench and being bombed by our men unmercifully. There I found my own Sergeant of our bomb throwing squad, to my great relief.