World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British
That Sunday brought with it some heavy fighting, and some very sad
losses. There was with us an officer whose family name is very
particularly associated with the Durham Light Infantry, and that was
Major Robb, as good and brave a gentleman as ever breathed.
After that proof of German treachery he received information that the
Germans meant to attack us again; but Major Robb thought it would be
better to turn things about, and let _us_ do the attacking. I dare say
he was burning to help to avenge the losses of the West Yorkshires, the
poor fellows who were lying dead and wounded all around us.
To carry out an attack like that was a desperate undertaking, because
the Germans were six hundred yards away, and the ground was all to their
advantage. It rose towards them, and they were on the skyline, so that
it became doubly difficult to reach them.
Well, the order was given to advance, and we got out of our trenches and
covered most of the distance in good order. Bit by bit we made our way
over the rising ground towards that skyline which was a blaze of fire,
and from which there came shells and bullets constantly.
There could be no such thing, of course, as a dash, however swift,
towards the skyline; we had to creep and crawl and make our way so as to
give them as little to hit as possible; but it was terrible--too
terrible.
We fell down under that deadly blast, and though I am not a particularly
religious man, I’ll own that I offered up a prayer, and the man on my
left said something of the same sort too. Poor chap! He had scarcely got
the words out of his mouth, when over he went, with a bullet in his
neck, and there he lay, while those of us who were fit and well kept up
and crept up.
At last we were near enough to the skyline to give the Germans rapid
fire, and we rattled away as fast as we could load and shoot, till the
rifles were hot with firing. After that rapid fire we crept up again,
and it was then that I saw Major Robb lying down, facing us, and smoking
a pipe--at least he had a pipe in his mouth, just as cool as usual. He
sang out to my platoon officer, “How are you feeling, Twist?”
Lieutenant Twist answered, “Oh, I’m about done for.” I looked at him and
saw that he was wounded in the chest and arm. We had to go on, and we
could not take him back just then.
The lieutenant had scarcely finished speaking when I saw Major Robb
himself roll over on his side. A poor lad named Armstrong, with four
more of our men, crept up to attend to the major, but a piece of
shrapnel struck the lad on the head and killed him--and other men were
falling all around me.
There was no help for it now--we had to get back to our trenches, if we
could; that was our only chance, as the Germans were hopelessly greater
in number than we were. So we made our way back as best we could, and we
took with us as many of the wounded as we could get hold of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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