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- for nearly two years, This particular village ie on the crest' of a ridge overlooking a valley over which the Tommies had to advance in the face of what must have been hell fire. We read of the intensity of the bombardment preceding the advance, sufficient to blow to atoms any ordinary trenches and dugouts, ITot .Fritz’s though. Just imagine the labor involved in building dug- outs twenty to forty feet below the surface, practically every one of them “bomb proof,. When our guns opened up on Fritz, he just beat it for his dugouts and felt secure. One dugout in particular was built of concrete, with walls facing the valley six feet thru. It contained a machine gun emplacement, with an embrasure opening out across the valley. And it» was in the face of such as this that the Mbig push" started, That the preliminary bombardment was something awful, the thousands of shell holes in and around the village amply testify. And it is over similar obstacles that every foot of the way back to the Rhine will have to be fought,
-This little village ie about three miles back of the front line, and it seemed queer to me to see the troops moving up in the day time. Up in Ypres ell such work is done at night, Down here though, Fritz is practically blind, our air service being so good, that one rarely sees a Fritzie balocn or plane up. If he does get one up, it doesn’t stay up very long, as our planes are Johnny on the spot. Saw a great sight that evening,Four Fritzies balloons were up at once, when our planes flew over them and dropped incendiary bombs on them. The way those balloons come down was a eight worth seeing. But to carry on.
About ten o’clock twelve of us were picked out to go up to the regimental aid post, situated in an old German trench about a mile from the front line. The kid and I were among the twelve. This portion of the line is called the graveyard, rather appropriate too, considering the sights around there. It is certainly under shell fire, though he seems to leave the trench alone,, and mostly shells to the right of the post. Here we saw another sample of a dugout, this one having been used by officers. It contained four bunks, had a marble slabbed bench, the walls were papered, and it even had electric light fixtures. Am afraid we didn't derive the same comfort from it as they did, for while it apparently housed only four of them, twenty of us "slept" in it that night. v-
I think you asked for some detail re our work in one of your letters so I’ll try and oblige. To this aid post the wounded are brought from the firing line by the regimental stretcher bearers. They do their work mostly in the day, working under the protection of a white flag carried by one of the bearers. This usually protects them from snipers end machine gun fire, although more than one was wounded by such fire when we were up there. Of course they have to take their chances with the shells. Squads are often sent from the ambulances to assist them in this work, but we were not called upon. To carry on. The stretcher cases are brought
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