FOUR days after the raid we marched through Béthune, now much knocked about and nearly deserted, to Fouquières, and there entrained for the Somme. The Somme railhead was near Amiens, and we proceeded by easy stages through Cardonette, Daours, and Buire until, on the afternoon of July 14th, we came to the original front line, close to where David Thomas, Richardson, and Pritchard had been killed. The fighting had moved two miles on. At 4 a.m. on July 15th, we struck the Méaulte-Fricourt-Bazentin road, which ran through ‘Happy Valley’, and reached the more recent battle area. Wounded and prisoners came streaming past in the half-light. I was shocked by the dead horses and mules; human corpses were all very well, but it seemed wrong for animals to be dragged into the war like this. We marched by platoons, at fifty yards’ distance. Just beyond Fricourt a German shell-barrage made the road impassable; so we left it and moved forward over thickly shell-pitted ground until 8 a.m., when we found ourselves on the fringe of Mametz Wood, among the dead of our own New Army battalions who had helped to capture it. There we halted in thick mist. The Germans had been using lachrymatory shell, and the mist held the fumes, making us cough. We tried to smoke, but our cigarettes tasted of gas, so we threw them away. Later, we cursed ourselves for fools, because it was our throats, not the cigarettes, that were affected.
When the mist cleared, we saw a German gun with ‘First Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers’ chalked on it – evidently a trophy. I wondered what had happened to Siegfried and my friends of ‘A’ Company. We found the battalion quite close in bivouacs; Siegfried was still alive, so were Edmund Dadd, and two other ‘A’ Company officers. The battalion had seen heavy fighting: in their first attack at Fricourt they overran our opposite number in the German Army, the Twenty-third Infantry Regiment, who were undergoing a special disciplinary spell in the trenches because an inspecting staff-officer, coming round, discovered all the officers ensconced in a deep dugout at Mametz village, instead of being up in the trenches with their men. (Edmund Dadd told me that throughout the bad time in March there were no German soldiers of higher rank opposite us than corporals.) The battalion’s next objective was ‘The Quadrangle’, a small copse this side of Mametz Wood, where Siegfried distinguished himself by taking, single-handed, a battalion frontage which the Royal Irish Regiment had failed to take the day before. He went over with bombs in daylight, under covering fire from a couple of rifles, and scared away the occupants. A pointless feat, since instead of signalling for reinforcements, he sat down in the German trench and began reading a book of poems which he had brought with him. When he finally went back he did not even report. Colonel Stockwell, then in command, raged at him. The attack on Mametz Wood had been delayed for two hours because British patrols were still reported to be out ‘British patrols’ were Siegfried and his book of poems. ‘I’d have got you a D.S.O., if you’d only shown more sense,’ stormed Stockwell. Siegfried had been doing heroic things ever since I left the battalion. His nickname in the Sevendi Division was ‘Mad Jack’. He won a Military Cross for bringing in a wounded lance-corporal from a mine-crater close to the German lines, under heavy fire. I missed him this time; he was down with the transport, having a rest But I sent him, by one of our own transport men, a rhymed letter about the times that we were going to have together when the war ended; how, after a rest at Harlech, we were going for a visit to the Caucasus and Persia and China; and what good poetry we would write. This was in answer to a rhymed letter he had written to me from the Army School at Flixécourt a few weeks previously. (It appears in The Old Huntsman.)
I went for a stroll with Edmund Dadd, who now commanded ‘A’ Company. ‘It’s not fair, Robert,’ Edmund began, plaintively. ‘You remember that “A” Company under Richardson was always the best in the battalion? Well, it’s kept up its reputation, and Stockpot shovesus in as the leading company at every show. We get our objectives and hold them, and so we’ve always got to do the same again. The worst of it is, he thinks I’m indispensable; and makes me go over each time, instead of giving me a rest and letting my second-in-command take his turn. I’ve had five shows in just over a fortnight, and I can’t go on being lucky much longer. Stockpot’s about due for his C.B. Apparently “A” Company is making sure he gets it.’
The next two days we spent in bivouacs outside Mametz Wood. We were in fighting kit and felt cold at night, so I went into the wood to find German overcoats to use as blankets. It was full of dead Prussian Guards Reserve, big men, and dead Royal Welch and South Wales Borderers of the New Army battalions, little men. Not a single tree in the wood remained unbroken. I collected my overcoats, and came away as quickly as I could, climbing through the wreckage of green branches. Going and coming, by the only possible route, I passed by the bloated and stinking corpse of a German with his back propped against a tree. He had a green face, spectacles, close-shaven hair; black blood was dripping from the nose and beard. I came across two other unforgettable corpses: a man of the South Wales Borderers and one of the Lehr Regiment had succeeded in bayoneting each other simultaneously. A survivor of the fighting told me later that he had seen a young soldier of the Fourteenth Royal Welch bayoneting a German in parade-ground style, automatically exclaiming: ‘In, out, on guard!’
I was still superstitious about looting or collecting souvenirs. ‘These greatcoats are only a loan,’ I told myself. Our brigade, the Nineteenth, was the reserve brigade of the Thirty-third Division; the other brigades, the Ninety-ninth and Hundredth, had attacked Martinpuich two days previously, but been halted with heavy losses as soon as they started. We were left to sit about in shell-holes and watch our massed artillery blazing away, almost wheel to wheel. On the 18th, we advanced to a position just north of Bazentin-le-Petit, and relieved the Tyneside Irish. I had been posted to ‘D’ Company. Our Irish guide was hysterical and had forgotten the way; we put him under arrest and found it ourselves. On the way up through the ruins of Bazentin-le-Petit, we were shelled with gas-shells. The standing order with regard to gas-shells was not to bother about respirators, but push on. Hitherto, they had all been lachrymatory ones; these were the first of the deadly kind, so we lost half a dozen men.
When at last ‘D’ Company reached the trenches, scooped beside a road and not more than three feet deep, the badly shaken Tyneside company we were relieving hurried off, without any of the usual formalities. I asked their officers where the Germans were. He said he didn’t know, but pointed vaguely towards Martinpuich, a mile to our front. Then I asked him who held our left flank, and how far off they were. He didn’t know. I damned his soul to Hell as he went away. Having got into touch with ‘C’ Company behind us on the right, and the Fourth Suffolks fifty yards to the left, we began deepening the trenches and presently located the Germans – in a trench system some five hundred yards to our front, keeping fairly quiet.
The next day, at dinnertime, very heavy shelling started: shells bracketed along the trench about five yards short and five yards over, but never quite got it. Three times running, my cup of tea was spilled by the concussion and filled with dirt. I happened to be in a cheerful mood, and just laughed. My parcel of kippers from home seemed far more important than any bombardment – I recalled with appreciation one of my mother’s sayings: ‘Children, remember this when you eat your kippers; kippers are cheap, yet if they cost a hundred guineas each they would still find buyers among the millionaires.’ A tame magpie had come into the trench; apparently belonging to the Germans driven out of the village by the Gordon Highlanders a day or two before. It looked very bedraggled. ‘That’s one for sorrow,’ I said. The men swore that it made some remark in German as it joined us, and talked of wringing its neck.
Being now off duty, I fell asleep in the trench without waiting for the bombardment to stop. It would be no worse getting killed asleep than awake. There were no dug-outs, of course. I found it quite easy to sleep through bombardments; though vaguely conscious of the noise, I let it go by. Yet if anybody came to wake me for my watch, or shouted ‘Stand-to!’, I was always alert in a second. I could fall asleep sitting down, standing, marching, lying on a stone floor, or in any other position, at a moment’s notice at any time of day or night. But on this occasion I had a fearful nightmare: of somebody handling me secretly, choosing the place to drive a knife into me. Finally, he gripped me in the small of the back. I woke up with a start, shouting, punched at the assassin’s hand – and found I had killed a mouse which had run down my neck for fear of the shells.
That afternoon the company got an order from brigade to build two cruciform strong-points at such-and-such a map reference. Moodie, the company commander, and I looked at our map and laughed. Moodie sent back a message that he would be glad to obey, but would first need an artillery bombardment and considerable reinforcements; because the points selected, half-way to Martinpuich, were occupied by the enemy. Colonel Crawshay came up and verified this. He told us to build the strong-points about three hundred yards forward and two hundred yards apart. So one platoon stayed behind in the trench, and the others went out and began digging. A cruciform strong-point consisted of two trenches, each some thirty yards long, crossing at right angles in the middle; being wired all round, it looked, in diagram, like a hot-cross bun. The defenders could bring fire to bear against attacks from any direction. We were to hold these points with a Lewis gun and a platoon of men apiece.
I had the first watch that night, and periodically visited both strong-points. My way to the right-hand one took me in bright moonlight along the Bazentin-High Wood road. A dead German sergeant-major, wearing a pack and full equipment, lay supine in the middle of the sunken cart-track, his arms stretched out wide. He was a short, powerful man with a full black beard. I needed a charm to get myself past this sinister figure. The simplest way, I found, was to cross myself. Evidently a brigade of the Seventh Division had captured the road, whereupon the Germans shelled it heavily. The defenders, who were Gordon Highlanders, had begun to scrape fire-positions in the north bank, facing the Germans, a task apparently interrupted by a counter-attack. Wounded men had crawled to a number of these small hollows, thrust their heads and shoulders inside, and died there. They looked as if hiding from the black beard.
On my second visit to the strong-point, I found the trench already dug two or three feet down, and a party of Royal Engineers waiting with coils of barbed-wire for the entanglement But work had stopped. The whisper went round: ‘Get your rifles ready. Here comes Fritz!’ I lay flat on my face to see better, and some seventy yards away in the moonlight, made out massed figures. I restrained the men, who were itching to fire, and sent a runner back to company headquarters asking Moodie for a Lewis gun and a flare-pistol at once. I said: ‘They probably don’t know we’re here, and we’ll get more of them if we let them come closer. They may even surrender.’ The men seemed to be under no proper command: we wondered why. There had been a number of German surrenders recently at night, and this might be one on a big scale. Then Moodie arrived with the Lewis gun, the flare-pistol, and a few more men carrying rifle-grenades. Deciding to give the enemy a chance, he sent up a flare and fired the Lewis gun over their heads. The tall officer who came running towards us, his hands lifted in surrender, seemed surprised to find that we were not Germans. He claimed that he belonged to the Public Schools Battalion in our own brigade. When asked what the hell the game was, he explained that he commanded a patrol. So Moodie sent him back for a few more of his men, to make sure it was not a trick. The patrol consisted of fifty men, wandering about aimlessly between the lines, their rifles slung, and, it seemed, without the faintest idea where they were, or what information they were supposed to secure. This Public Schools Battalion was one of four or five similar ones formed in 1914. Their training had been continually interrupted by the large withdrawal of men needed to officer other regiments. The only men left, in fact, appeared to be those unfitted to hold commissions; or even to make good private soldiers. The other battalions remained in England as training corps: this alone was sent out, and proved a constant embarrassment to the brigade.
I picked up a souvenir that night. A German gun-team had been shelled while galloping out of Bazentin towards Martinpuich. The horses and driver lay dead on the road. At the back of the limber were the gunners’ treasures, among them a large lump of chalk wrapped in a piece of cloth – carved and decorated in colours with military mottoes, the flags of the Central Powers, and the names of the various battles in which the gunner had served. I sent it to headquarters as a present to Dr Dunn. Both he and it survived the war; he is practising at Glasgow again, and the lump of chalk reposes under a glass case in his consulting room.
Next evening, July 19th, we were relieved and told that we would be attacking High Wood, which could be seen a thousand yards away to the right at the top of a slope. High Wood, which the French called ‘Raven Wood’, formed part of the main German battle-line that ran along the ridge, with Delville Wood not far off on the German left. Two British brigades had already attempted it; in both cases a counter-attack drove them out again. The Royal Welch were now reduced by casualties to about four hundred strong, including transport, stretcher-bearers, cooks, and other non-combatants. I took command of ‘B’ Company.
I have kept a Battalion Order issued at midnight:
To O.C. ‘B’ Co. 2nd R.W.F. 20.7.16.
S14b 99 was the map reference for Bazentin churchyard. We lay here on the reverse slope of a slight ridge, about half a mile from the wood. I attended the meeting of company commanders; Colonel Crawshay told us the plan. ‘Look here, you fellows,’ he said, ‘we’re in reserve for this attack. The Cameronians and the Fifth Scottish Rifles are going up to the wood first; that’s at 5 a.m. The Public Schools Battalion are in support, should anything go wrong. I don’t know whether we shall be called on; if we are, it will mean that the Jocks have legged it’ He added: ‘As usual.’ This was an appeal to prejudice. ‘The Public Schools Battalion is, well, what we know it is; so if we’re called for, that will be the end of us.’ He said this with a laugh, and we all laughed.
We were sitting on the ground, protected by a road-bank; a battery of French 75’s began firing rapid over our heads from about twenty yards away. There was an even greater concentration of guns in Happy Valley now. We could hardly hear the colonel’s words, but understood that if we did get orders to reinforce, we were to shake out in artillery formation; once in the wood, we were to hang on like death. Then he said goodbye and good luck, and we rejoined our companies.
At this juncture the usual inappropriate message came through from division. Division could always be trusted to send a warning about verdigris on vermorel-sprayers, or the keeping of pets in trenches, or being polite to our allies, or some other triviality, exactly when an attack was in progress. This time orders came for a private in ‘C’ Company to report immediately, under escort of a lance-corporal, to the assistant provost-marshal back at Albert, where a court-martial had been convened. A sergeant of the company must also report as a witness in the case. The private was charged with the murder of a French civilian in an estaminet at Béthune a month previously. It seems that a good deal of cognac had been going round, and the French civilian, who bore a grudge against the British because of his faithless wife, began to insult the private. He was reported, somewhat improbably, as having said: ‘Anglais no bon, Allmand très bon. War fineesh, napoo les Anglais. Allmand win’ The private had thereupon drawn his bayonet and run the man through. At the court-martial the private was exonerated; the French civil representative commending him for having ‘energetically repressed local defeatism’. So he and two N.C.O.s missed the battle.
What sort of a battle they missed I pieced together afterwards. The Jocks did get into the wood, and the Royal Welch were not called on to reinforce until eleven o’clock in the morning. The Germans put down a barrage along our ridge where we were lying, and we lost a third of the battalion before the show started. I was one of the casualties.
The German batteries were handing out heavy stuff, six- and eight-inch, and so much of it that we decided to move back fifty yards at a rush. As we did so, an eight-inch shell burst three paces behind me. I heard the explosion, and felt as though I had been punched rather hard between the shoulder-blades, but without any pain. I took the punch merely for the shock of the explosion; but blood trickled into my eye and, turning faint, I called to Moothie: ‘I’ve been hit.’ Then I fell A minute or two before I had got two very small wounds on my left hand; and in exactly the same position as the two that drew blood from my right hand during the preliminary bombardment at Loos. This I took as a lucky sign, and for further security repeated to myself a line of Nietzsche’s, in French translation:
Non, tu ne me peux pas tuer!
It was the poem about a man on the scaffold with the red-bearded executioner standing over him. (My copy of Nietzsche’s poems, by the way, had contributed to the suspicions of my spying activities. Nietzsche, execrated in the newspapers as the philosopher of German militarism, was more properly interpreted as a William le Queux mystery-man – the sinister figure behind the Kaiser.)
One piece of shell went through my left thigh, high up, near the groin; I must have been at the full stretch of my stride to escape emasculation. The wound over the eye was made by a little chip of marble, possibly from one of the Bazentin cemetery headstones. (Later. I had it cut out, but a smaller piece has since risen to the surface under my right eyebrow, where I keep it for a souvenir.) This, and a finger-wound which split the bone, probably came from another shell bursting in front of me. But a piece of shell had also gone in two inches below the point of my right shoulder-blade and came out through my chest two inches above the right nipple.
My memory of what happened then is vague. Apparently Dr Dunn came up through the barrage with a stretcher-party, dressed my wound, and got me down to the old German dressing-station at the north end of Mametz Wood. I remember being put on the stretcher, and winking at the stretcher-bearer sergeant who had just said: ‘Old Gravy’s got it, all right!’ They laid my stretcher in a comer of the dressing-station, where I remained unconscious for more than twenty-four hours.
Late that night, Colonel Crawshay came back from High Wood and visited the dressing-station; he saw me lying in the corner, and they told him I was done for. The next morning, July 21st, clearing away the dead, they found me still breadthing and put me on an ambulance for Heilly, the nearest field hospital. The pain of being jolted down the Happy Valley, with a shell hole at every three or four yards of the road, woke me up. I remember screaming. But back on the better roads I became unconscious again. That morning, Crawshay wrote the usual formal letters of condolence to the next-of-kin of the six or seven officers who had been killed. This was his letter to my mother:
Dear Mrs Graves,
22.7.16
I very much regret to have to write and tell you your son has died of wounds. He was very gallant, and was doing so well and is a great loss.
He was hit by a shell and very badly wounded, and died on the way down to the base I believe. He was not in bad pain, and our doctor managed to get across and attend to him at once.
We have had a very hard time, and our casualties have been large. Believe me you have all our sympathy in your loss, and we have lost a very gallant soldier.
Please write to me if I can tell you or do anything.
Yours sincerely,
C. Crawshay, Lt-Col.
Then he made out the official casualty list – a long one, because only eighty men were left in the battalion – and reported me ‘died of wounds’. Heilly lay on the railway; close to the station stood the hospital tents with the red cross prominently painted on the roofs, to discourage air-bombing. Fine July weather made the tents insufferably hot. I was semi-conscious now, and aware of my lung-wound through a shortness of breath. It amused me to watch the little bubbles of blood, like scarlet soap-bubbles, which my breath made in escaping through the opening of the wound. The doctor came over to my bed. I felt sorry for him; he looked as though he had not slept for days.
I asked him: ‘Can I have a drink?’
‘Would you like some tea?’
I whispered: ‘Not with condensed milk.’
He said, most apologetically: ‘I’m afraid there’s no fresh milk.’
Tears of disappointment pricked my eyes; I expected better of a hospital behind the lines.
‘Will you have some water?’
‘Not if it’s boiled.’
‘It is boiled. And I’m afraid I can’t give you anything alcoholic in your present condition.’
‘Some fruit then?’
‘I have seen no fruit for days.’
Yet a few minutes later he returned with two rather unripe greengages. In whispers I promised him a whole orchard when I recovered.
The nights of the 22nd and 23 rd were horrible. Early on the morning of the 24th, when the doctor came round the ward, I said: ‘You must send me away from here. This heat will kill me.’ It was beating on my head through the canvas.
‘Stick it out. Your best chance is to lie here and not to be moved You’d not reach the Base alive.’
‘Let me risk the move. I’ll be all right, you’ll see.’
Half an hour later he returned. ‘Well, you’re having it your way. I’ve just got orders to evacuate every case in the hospital. Apparently the Guards have been in it up at Delville Wood, and they’ll all be coming down tonight.’ I did not fear that I would die, now – it was enough to be honourably wounded and bound for home.
A brigade-major, wounded in the leg, who lay in the next bed, gave me news of the battalion. He looked at my label and said: ‘I see you’re in the Second Royal Welch. I watched your High Wood show through field-glasses. The way your battalion shook out into artillery formation, company by company – with each section of four or five men in file at fifty yards interval and distance – going down into the hollow and up the slope through the barrage, was the most beautiful bit of parade-ground drill I’ve ever seen. Your company officers must have been superb.’ Yet one company at least had started without a single officer. When I asked whether they had held the wood, he told me: ‘They hung on to near the end. I believe what happened was that the Public Schools Battalion came away at dark; and so did most of the Scotsmen. Your chaps were left there more or less alone for some time. They steadied themselves by singing. Afterwards the chaplain – R.C. of course – Father McCabe, brought the Scotsmen back. Being Glasgow Catholics, they would follow a priest where they wouldn’t follow an officer. The centre of the wood was impossible for either the Germans or your fellows to hold – a terrific concentration of artillery on it. The trees were splintered to matchwood Late that night a brigade of the Seventh Division relieved the survivors; it included your First Battalion.’
This was not altogether accurate. I know now that some men of the Public Schools Battalion, without officers or N.C.O.s, maintained their positions in the left centre of the wood, where they stayed until relieved by a brigade of the Seventh Division twenty-two hours later. Nor did the Scots all behave badly, though I have since substantiated the flight from the wood of a great many Cameronians, and their return under Father McShane (not McCabe). Captain Colbart of the Fifth Scottish Rifles has recently written to me:
We attacked on the right; the Cameronians on the left, taking our objectives and sundry Germans. After midday I was the only officer left in our battalion. At about 9 a.m., the troops on the left fell back before a counter-attack – they didn’t try to fight, as far as I saw. They were all mixed up – Cameronians, Scottish Rifles, Public Schools Battalion. The debacle was stopped in mid-wood, and my company on the right retook our objective. I was holding a strong-point at the east corner of the wood, which we had built according to orders, when the Royal Welch came up under Moothie. They attacked North-west and took the whole wood. Colonel Crawshay had his headquarters at the south corner; I reported to him there, and then rejoined my troops when the Germans counter-attacked with heavy artillery support at about 5 p.m. under heavy shell-fire.
Crawshay reported to Brigade that he had captured the wood but would not be responsible for holding it unless reinforcements came up at once. By the time these arrived, the Germans had got a footing in the North-west corner. We were relieved by the Ninety-eighth Brigade of our own Division.
That evening, the R.A.M.C. orderlies dared not lift me from the stretcher into a hospital train bunk, for fear of starting haemorrhage in the lung. So they laid the stretcher above it, with the handles resting on the head-rail and foot-rail. I had now been on the same stretcher for five days. I remember the journey as a nightmare. My back was sagging, and I could not raise my knees to relieve the cramp, the bunk above me being only a few inches away. A German flying-officer, on the other side of the carriage, with a compound fracture of the leg from an aeroplane crash, groaned and wept without a pause. Though the other wounded men cursed him, telling him to stow it and be a man, he continued pitiably, keeping everyone awake. He was not delirious – just frightened and in great pain. An orderly gave me a pencil and paper, and I wrote home to my mother: ‘I am wounded, but all right.’ This was July 24th, my twenty-first birthday, and also the official date of my death. She got the letter two days after that written by the colonel; mine was dated ‘July 23rd’, because I had lost count of days; his, the 22nd.* They could not decide whether my letter had been written just before I died and misdated, or whether I had died just after writing it. ‘Died of wounds’, however, seemed so much more circumstantial then ‘killed’ that, on receipt of a long telegram from the Army Council confirming my death, they gave me up. I found myself in No. 8 Hospital at Rouen – an ex-château high above the town. The next day my Aunt Susan came from the South of France to visit a South Wales Borderer nephew in the same hospital, whose leg had just been amputated. Happening to see my name listed on the door of the ward, she gave me some of the nectarines intended for him, and wrote to reassure my mother. On the 30th, Colonel Crawshay sent me a letter:
Dear von Runicke,
30.7.16
I cannot tell you how pleased I am you are alive. I was told your number was up for certain, and a letter was supposed to have come in from Field Ambulance saying you had gone under.
Well, it’s good work. We had a rotten time, and after succeeding in doing practically the impossible we collected that rotten crowd and put them in their places, but directly dark came they legged it. It was too sad.
We lost heavily. It is not fair putting brave men like ours alongside that crowd. I also wish to thank you for your good work and bravery, and only wish you could have been with them. I have read of bravery but I have never seen such magnificent and wonderful disregard for death as I saw that day. It was almost uncanny – it was so great. I once heard an old officer in the Royal Welch say the men would follow you to Hell; but these chaps would bring you back and put you in a dug-out in Heaven.
Good luck and a quick recovery. I shall drink your health tonight.
‘Tibs.’
I had much discomfort from the shortness of my breath; but no pain except from the finger wound, which was festering because nobody could be bothered with a slight thing like that; and from the thigh, where the sticky medical plaster, used to hold down the dressing, pulled out the hair each time it was taken off to let the wound be sterilized. I contrasted the pain and discomfort favourably with that of the operation on my nose two months previously; for which I had won no sympathy at all, because it was not a war injury. The R.A.M.C. bugling outraged me. The ‘Rob All My Comrades’, I complained petulantly, had taken everything I possessed, except for a few papers in my tunic-pocket, and a ring which was too tight on my finger to be pulled off; and now they mis-blew the Last Post – flatly and windily, and with the pauses in the wrong places – just to annoy me. I told an orderly to put the bugler under arrest and jump to it, or I’d report him to the senior medical officer.
Next to me lay a Royal Welch second-lieutenant named O. M. Roberts, who had joined the battalion only a few days before the show. He told me about High Wood; he had reached the fringe when he got wounded in the groin and fell into a shell-hole. Some time during the afternoon he recovered consciousness and saw a German staff officer working round the edge of the wood, killing off the wounded with an automatic pistol. Some of the Royal Welch were, apparently, not lying as still as wounded men should, but sniping. They owed the enemy a grudge: a section of Germans had pretended to surrender but, when within range, started throwing stick-bombs. The officer worked nearer. He saw Roberts move, came towards him, fired, and hit him in the arm. Roberts, very weak, tugged at his Webley. He had great difficulty in getting it out of the holster. The German fired again and missed. Roberts rested the Webley against the lip of the shell-hole and tried to pull the trigger, but lacked the strength. The German had come quite close now, to make certain of him. Roberts just managed to pull the trigger with the fingers of both hands when the German was only five paces off The shot took the top of his head off. Roberts fainted.
The doctors had been anxiously watching my lung, as it filled with blood and pressed my heart too far away to the left of my body; the railway journey had restarted the haemorrhage. They marked its gradual progress with an indelible pencil on my skin, and said that when it reached a certain point they would have to aspirate me. This sounded a serious operation, but it simply consisted in pushing a hollow needle into my lung from the back, and drawing the blood off with a vacuum flask. They gave me a local anaesthetic; the prick hurt no worse than a vaccination, and I was reading the Gazette de Rouen as the blood hissed into the flask. It did not look more than half a pint.
That evening, I heard a sudden burst of lovely singing in the courtyard where the ambulances pulled up. I recognized the quality of the voices. ‘The First Battalion have been in it again,’ I said to Roberts; and the nurse verified this for me. It must have been their Delville Wood show.
A day or two later I sailed back to England by hospital ship.