I went on to Fort Glatz and to some of the other advanced aid-posts.
We had many casualties, but we felt that the worst was not yet over,
for we knew that, although we had taken the hill, the Germans would
make a desperate fight to get it back again. All day long our artillery
pounded away and our infantry consolidated the line. Our Pioneer
Battalion did splendid work in digging trenches under heavy fire, in
order to connect our advanced positions. When the sun set and the
night once more cast its shade over the earth, there was no cessation
in the sound of battle.
The next morning I visited the wounded in the C.C.S., and in the
afternoon went by car once more to the 7th Siege Battery and thence
made my way through Maroc to the front, as I had heard from the General
that the artillery were having a hard time. Their guns had been firing
incessantly since the barrage started. I met many men on the journey
who gave me accounts of their experiences during the battle, and, by
the time I reached the Y.M.C.A. coffee-stall in a ruined building on
the Maroc-Loos road it was quite late. Here in a cellar I found some
men making coffee for the walking wounded, who were coming back very
tired and glad of a shelter and a hot drink. I went on down the road
to the well concealed trenches which led to the 1st and 2nd Artillery
Brigade Headquarters. In the deep dugout, I found the O.C.s of the two
brigades and their staffs hard at work. It was an anxious time, because
ammunition was short, and every available man was employed in carrying
it up to the guns. The Senior Colonel asked me if I would go round to
some of the gun pits and talk to the men. They were tired out, he
said, with the constant firing, and there was still no prospect of a
rest. I told him that if he would give me a runner to act as guide, I
would visit all the gun-pits of the two Brigades. Accordingly a (p. 200)
runner was sent for, and he and I started off at midnight. It was very
dark, and when we emerged from the trench and turned to the right on
the Lens-Bethune road we met parties of wounded men coming back, and
the batteries in the fields beside us were firing over our heads. We
visited first the cellar of a building by the way, where there was an
aid post. Here were many men being attended to by the doctors. They
were all worn out, and did not look forward with much pleasure to
their journey back to Maroc along the dark and dangerous road.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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