Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 33

We are out of the trenches and back in our dear, draughty but dry billet in the château stables. It has been a good day full of interest but we are all tired and weary from lack of sleep and are therefore thankful to forsake the excitement of the firing line for the quiet and comparative safety of our present sanctum.

About 11 a.m. the Bosches started on our left sector with ‘whiz-bangs’ and concentrated these in the vicinity of Coy headquarters. They must have dropped thirty round us before noon. At the same time, they sniped us like old boots but we gave them back as good as their own at the latter game and, when our guns commenced, they dealt it out thick and plenty to the Bosche in shrapnel, light and heavy ordnance. It was all right. The shooting of our gunners is markedly superior to theirs. We drop right on the spot every time but they invariably waste from six to a dozen rounds feeling for theirs. When the good time comes that we have unlimited shell supply, Bosche is in for a thin time indeed. Also our fellows put the wind up several of their snipers, popping bullets all about them till they felt the neighbourhood unhealthy and quitted.

It is exciting work, sniping. In fact one must curb the tendency lest it should become a fascination. The Second-in-Command of the E. Lancs^ix and myself put in a couple of hours this morning at it and had quite a bit of fun worrying the Bosches in their trenches. One fellow was walking across the open 2,000 yards off, when I spotted him and let go. You never saw a chap move quicker in your life. He ran for a tree and jumped behind it and I let him have four more there. Whether I got him or not I don’t know but he didn’t move for the next half-hour. I know because I waited so anxiously for him.

Last night, or rather at 1.30 a.m. this morning, I got outside the barbed wire to look for a listening post which had lost itself. Naturally I didn’t find it. You seldom do, but I got lost myself instead. It was some tour and a bally Bosche Maxim which kept traversing our front added not a little to my perturbation. Three times I had to fling myself down in the wet grass, bury my nose in it and grovel whilst the damn thing went chattering over me. It is remarkable with what speed one learns to introduce celerity into ‘adopting the prone position’. The bally post came in at the end of the bottom of the lines and narrowly missed being shot for its pains.

We have no casualties, are quite satisfied and very sleepy, so to bye-byes. Only one thing before we go. The post waited for us on arrival. With what joy we pounced on it. It bucked the most beat of us up into smiles of laughter. Letters from home. What a tremendous lot that sentence means to us. And as for me, your letters are like a breath of spring in that they bring joy and happiness to me. And your photo has come this time also. Thank God for it. I think it is splendid. You look your lovely self, and I feel so proud when I look at it that I can say you are mine. What with your picture and Baby’s, I am happy. No man was ever blest with sweeter womenfolk.