![]() ![]() ![]() But just before sundown yesterday, while I was sitting in my dugout, I witnessed that incident just beneath me, about 300 yards off shore, and it seemed the most natural scene in the world. To sit in an armchair and read of a destroyer shelling enemy positions, with enemy shells sending up small water-spouts all around her, while the boat is twisting, turning and constantly firing, makes exciting news. It is curious how after a short time fighting affects one's sense of proportion. In the Trenches, October 1, 1915Dear Pater, It is darkening rapidly, so I will close for present. I was sent in charge of my platoon on another section of the firing-line, where in spots one could almost touch their parapet with a rifle and bayonet in one spot, both sides are separated only by a line of sandbags! On the 26th and 27th I had my first practice in bomb-fighting. When my turn comes I shall get it, but Abdul - as we call the Turk - will have to use better aim and time his shells better. I was splattered with about five or ten bullets and a jagged piece of the shell-case struck between my feet. Yesterday morning, a shrapnel shell burst just above me. Escapes, narrow escapes, are so frequent that unless actually hit one barely notices danger. One never knows when one may be wounded or killed out here, so I have taken every opportunity of writing. In the Trenches, September 28, 1915Dear Pater, Study hard, be good, and give my love to all. Well, Dot, paper is scarce, so I must close. In spite of the cold nights the days are very hot and everyone is burnt as brown as a berry. I never ate onions before I came here, save eschalots but here we get them every third or fourth day, and they taste excellently. We had a great treat for breakfast to-day - boiled eggs - one each! Sometimes all we have for a meal is boiled rice and sugar but that is very filling. Only yesterday I saw a little green and yellow bird, like a canary, hopping about and pecking for food right between us and the Turks - a place where we are no more than fifteen yards from the enemy, and bombing and rifle-fire are making a staccato racket one would think enough to scare away every living thing. But everywhere, one sees little birds flying. In the Firing Line, 5.50pm, September 26, 1915Hello Dorothy,Ĭannons are going off all the time, or, if not cannons, bombs. Well, if these people had been in the firing-line three days and heard the "smacks" of hundreds of bullets on the sandbags constantly, and all the time saw exactly two Turks 1,500 yards away - well, they'd change their tune, I'll wager. "Forty yards!" I have often heard people sneer at papers describing it as something fine to advance that much. They were beaten back, and when we counter-attacked and took their own trench their casualties were estimated at 500, while ours totalled five! We gained forty yards. The night before last the Turks attacked on our left. ![]()
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