One Young Man | Page 9

but of course they vary. It seems to me safer to be in the trenches than out; however, it is bad luck if you are hit. No one was killed in our company all the time we were in, and only three wounded, so you will see there is not much to worry about; and with some pay and parcels which I have received, and about twelve letters, I feel much better."
Sydney Baxter often mentions his chum in this record and I think the following extract from George's letter about this time may well be inserted here. The two boys were inseparable until the last and absolute bodily separation between the living and the dead.
"Everything is going on all right with us. We have finished our first taste of trench life, and on the whole it was rather enjoyable. We went in last Monday and came out late on Saturday. The first two or three days were wet, so our opportunities for sleep were few, especially as at our part of the trench there were no dug-outs and our sleep had to be obtained in the open air. In fact, until the fourth day I only had one hour's sleep, and on the last day I managed about five hours. The chief trouble was trying to boil water, but we managed by cutting a candle into small pieces and putting this, with a piece of rag, into a tin, using the rag as a wick.
"Our five days and nights were on the whole fairly quiet; in fact, during the day hardly any shots were exchanged, most of the firing being done at night. During the day it was impossible to look over the trench, as we were only fifty yards from the Germans, so we considered it advisable not to exhibit too much curiosity in case our health suffered thereby. At night time the Germans use star-shells to illuminate the proceedings, and they always seem nervy and think we are going to attack their trench. If we start firing a little more than usual they think it is the signal for an attack, and they blaze away like fury. We had a good example of this on our last night in the trenches.
"Someone started firing, someone else took it up and in no time the noise was like the final end-up of fireworks at the White City. From that it got much worse, and I suppose they really thought we were going for them, so their artillery sent us a few shells; but they did no damage. Eventually they seemed satisfied that we were quite safe, so they wound up the proceedings.
"There is one lot here who, whenever they go into the trenches, shove their hats on their rifles, wave them about, and then shout across to the Germans to come out in the open and have a proper fight. Whenever this happens the Germans lie low and hardly fire a shot.
"One advantage of being so close to the Germans is that they cannot shell us without damaging their own trench as much as ours, so that, although we heard plenty going along overhead, we had none very near us."

One Young Man at Hill 60

CHAPTER V
ONE YOUNG MAN AT HILL 60
Many have described in vivid, and none in too vivid, language the fighting in the spring of 1915. This one young man went through it all, through the thickest of it all. He can tell a tale which, if written up and around, would be as thrilling as any yet recorded of those heroic days. But I prefer, and I know he, a soldier, would prefer, to chronicle the events of his day after day just as they occurred, without colour, and without comment.
I print, then, Sydney Baxter's account of the fighting as he wrote it. I promised that this should be an altogether true chronicle, and it is well that some who live in the shelter of other men's heroism should know of the sacrifices by which they are saved. And then, too, as I read his pages, I heard a suggestion that we were all in danger of "spoiling" the wounded who come back to us after enduring, for our sakes, the pains he here describes.
"For three nights the bombardment had been tremendous.
"It was 7 o'clock on the Sunday morning when we first got the alarm--'turn out and be ready to march off at once.' We heard that the Hill--the famous Hill 60--had gone up and that we had been successful in holding it, but the rumours were that the fighting was terrific. We were soon marching on the road past battered Vlamertinghe. Shells of heavy calibre were falling on all sides, and we made for the Convent by the Lille gate, by a circuitous route--round by the