World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British
The mother also was dreadfully upset, but not seriously hurt. We lost no
time in getting them into the underground part of a café near at hand,
and there we had to leave them. I don’t know what became of them, but I
suppose they were taken away. I often wonder what has happened to the
poor little soul and her mother, victims, like so many thousands more,
of the German invaders. I am glad to know that with our field-dressings
we were able to help a good many civilians who were wounded.
The four cars I have mentioned were big transport-lorries, made
specially for the war, and very fine work can be done with them. But how
different the work is from that which we used to do at home as
motor-drivers!--and I had a fair experience of that before I joined the
Transport Service. There was as much difference between the two as there
is between this war and the South African War, in which I served in the
Imperial Yeomanry.
These lorries carried immense quantities of ammunition, and so the
Germans made a special point of going for them, in the hope of bringing
about a destructive explosion; but, taken on the whole, they had very
poor luck that way.
When the order came to us in the Market Square at Ypres to march, we
left the city and travelled along the roads till it was dark; and after
that we returned to the city, taking the stuff with us. No sooner were
we back in Ypres than the Germans started shelling again, after having
ceased fire for about four hours.
What we carried was wanted for the guns, but we could not reach them,
owing to the excessive danger from the German fire. It is a strange fact
that as soon as any stuff was going through by transport the Germans
started shelling it, which seems to show that they had word when
transports were on the move. They shelled us constantly, and we got to
take the thing as a very ordinary part of the day’s work.
It was only when some uncommon explosion occurred that we were roused to
take notice; and such an event took place one day when one of the very
biggest of the German shells burst in the air not far away from me with
a tremendous crash, and made an immense cloud of awful smoke and rubbish
as the fragments struck the ground.
This explosion was so near and so unusual that I thought I would get
hold of a souvenir of it. And so I did. I secured a piece of the base of
the shell, and meant to bring it home as a trophy; but I had to leave
it, for the weight of the fragment was 95 lb., and that’s a trifle heavy
even for a transport-driver. This was certainly one of the very biggest
and most awful of the German shells of the immense number I saw explode.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account