In the Firing Line: Stories of the War by Land and SeaAdcock, Arthur St. John
History
In the Firing Line: Stories of the War by Land and Sea
Adcock, Arthur St. John
World War, 1914-1918
We see more Germans than you could count in the day, but they are now
very funky about it, and they will never wait for a personal interview
with one of our men, especially if he has a lance or a bayonet handy,
and naturally you don’t go out German-hunting without something of
the kind with you, if only just for luck. When they must face us they
usually get stuck away somewhere where they are protected by more guns
than you ever set eyes on, and likewise crowds of machine guns of the
Maxim pattern, mounted on motors. These are not now so troublesome, for
they are easy to spot out in the open, and our marksmen quickly pick
off the men serving them, so the Germans are getting a bit shy about
displaying them. Something we heard the other day has put new life into
us; not that we were downhearted before, but what I mean shows that we
are going to have all we wished for very soon, and though we can’t tell
you more you may be sure that we are going on well.
* * * * *
_Letter 68.--From Private G. A. Turner, to his father, Mr. J. W.
Turner, of Leeds_ (_Published in the “Leeds Mercury”_):
I am still living, though a bit knocked about. I got a birthday present
from the Kaiser. I was wounded on the 23rd. So it was a near thing, was
it not? I got your letter at a place called Moroilles, in France, about
five miles from Landrecies, where our troops have retired.
On Sunday, 23rd, we had rifle inspection at 11 a.m., and were ordered
to fall in for bathing parade at 11.30. While we were waiting for
another company to return from the river the Germans commenced to shell
the town. We fell in about 1.0 p.m., an hour and a half afterwards, to
go to the scene of the attack. Shells were bursting in the streets as
we went. We crossed a bridge over the canal under artillery fire, and
stood doing nothing behind a mill on the bank for some time.
Then someone cried out that the Germans were advancing along the canal
bank, and our company were ordered to go along. We thought we were
going to check the Germans, but we found out afterwards that a company
of our own regiment were in position further along on the opposite side
of the canal, and we were being sent out to reinforce them.
There was no means of crossing the canal at that point, so it was an
impossibility. As soon as we started to move we were spotted by the
Germans, who opened fire with their guns at about five hundred yards
with shrapnel, and the scene that followed beggars description. Several
of us were laid full length behind a wooden fence about half an inch
thick. The German shells burst about three yards in front of it. It was
blown to splinters in about ten minutes. None of us expected to get out
alive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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