erwards killed while charging a machine-gun
in the open. We looked round to see what our fourth line was doing. My
company's fourth line had no leader. Captain W----k, wounded twice,
had fallen into a shell-hole, while Sergeant S----r had been killed
during the preliminary bombardment. Men were kneeling and firing. I
started back to see if I could bring them up, but they were too far
away. I made a cup of my mouth and shouted, as J---- was shouting. We
could not be heard. I turned round again and advanced to a gap in the
German wire. There was a pile of our wounded here on the German
parapet.

Suddenly I cursed. I had been scalded in the left hip. A shell, I
thought, had blown up in a water-logged crump-hole and sprayed me with
boiling water. Letting go of my rifle, I dropped forward full length
on the ground. My hip began to smart unpleasantly, and I left a
curious warmth stealing down my left leg. I thought it was the boiling
water that had scalded me. Certainly my breeches looked as if they
were saturated with water. I did not know that they were saturated
with blood.

So I lay, waiting with the thought that I might recover my strength (I
could barely move) and try to crawl back. There was the greater
possibility of death, but there was also the possibility of life. I
looked around to see what was happening. In front lay some wounded;
on either side of them stakes and shreds of barbed wire twisted into
weird contortions by the explosions of our trench-mortar bombs. Beyond
this nothing but smoke, interspersed with the red of bursting bombs
and shrapnel.

From out this ghastly chaos crawled a familiar figure. It was that of
Sergeant K----, bleeding from a wound in the chest. He came crawling
towards me.

"Hallo, K----," I shouted.

"Are you hit, sir?" he asked.

"Yes, old chap, I am," I replied.

"You had better try and crawl back," he suggested.

"I don't think I can move," I said.

"I'll take off your equipment for you."

He proceeded very gallantly to do this. I could not get to a kneeling
position myself, and he had to get hold of me, and bring me to a
kneeling position, before undoing my belt and shoulder-straps. We
turned round and started crawling back together. I crawled very slowly
at first. Little holes opened in the ground on either side of me, and
I understood that I was under the fire of a machine-gun. In front
bullets were hitting the turf and throwing it four or five feet into
the air. Slo