Then the prisoners commenced to come back. They appeared to be glad to
get out of it and I don't blame them. When they found that they had to
go through the Canadian's lines, however, they held back. They had
been told that the Canadians killed all prisoners. (We had heard
something of the same kind about the Germans, too.) However, when our
cooks came out with "dixies" full of steaming tea, with bread and
marmalade sandwiches, they soon became reconciled. Our men made no
distinction that morning between captor and captive, serving all alike
with everything we had to eat or drink. At one time, however, owing to
the congestion in the trench, we were compelled to "shoo" a lot of the
prisoners back "overland," to the next support trench. As their
artillery was raising merry hell all over that section, they were a
bit backward about starting and it required threats and a display of
bayonets to get them out of the trench and on their way. It was a
funny sight to see them beat it. There was little in the way of
obstacles to impede their progress and I think that several of them
came near to establishing new world's records for the distance. When
they arrived at the second line they wasted no time in climbing down
into it; they went in head-first, like divers going into the water. I
don't think any of them was hit during this maneuver, at least I did
not see any of them fall.
Now, it has come to be an axiom that "any one can take a trench but
few can hold one." It is another way of expressing the idea that "it
isn't the original cost--it's the upkeep."
It was no trick at all, with the assistance of the mines, to advance
our lines to what had been the German third line, but, right there,
some one had made a miscalculation. It's a cinch our "higher-ups" did
not know how much artillery the Germans had that they could turn on
that salient. Our own artillery had been greatly increased and they
evidently thought we were at least equal to the enemy in this respect,
but, say: the stuff he turned loose on us made our artillery look like
pikers. For every "whizz-bang" we sent over he returned about a dozen
5.9's. By that night, nearly all the original attackers were gone and
Fritz was back in at least two of the craters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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