With Our Soldiers in France | Page 5

use revolvers and
bayonets in that dark hole and the Germans seemed to get nervous and
could not shoot straight in the panic. We lost only one of our men, but
we killed seven and took the rest of the twenty prisoners. Then, before
they found out what had happened, we crawled through to the German
end of the tunnel and blew up their sap.
"You say was I a Christian? Not me! I was wild and going to the devil.
But one night I was wounded and lay in a deserted shell hole, shot
through the thigh, and unable to move for fifteen hours. I was feeling
for a cigarette in my pocket to ease the pain a bit, but all I could find
was a little pocket testament which someone had given me, but which I

had never read. I managed to get it out and, thinking it might be my last
hour, and that I might never be found, I started to read to try and forget
my wound. I read the twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew, and sir, that
little book changed my life. I have read a chapter every day since then.
I was picked up by the infantry and carried to a hospital. One night
when I could not sleep for the pain, the nurse asked me if she could do
anything for me, and I asked her to read the Bible to me. She said she
had never read it in her life, and I said it was about time she began, if
that was so. After she read it, she said it helped her too. Yes, I say my
prayers on my knees in the tent now. Another boy has joined me this
week; and the language in the tent is getting better. I'm off to the front
tomorrow to take my turn again. But I'm no longer alone up there in the
trenches. It's different now."
We have heard the story of one in the infantry and of a sapper
underground. Here is the experience of a young Canadian student from
McGill University in the artillery:
"The past weeks have been ten thousand hells. It is nothing but death,
noise, blood, and mud. There are only two of our sergeants left now
and we have to keep up our spirits. You often feel as if your brain
would burst. I couldn't begin to describe the inferno human beings pass
through every day. 'Happy' was shot to pieces with a shell a few nights
ago while in bed, both arms and one leg off. I carried him for over four
hours to the nearest dressing station and then stayed and watched him
die. He never whimpered. Though in terrible agony, he died game, as
he always was. That is about the hardest knock I have ever had in my
life. He is only one of my many friends that have gone. Believe me,
war is Hell."
Here is the account of a simple Australian boy in the front trench:
"Fritz had a machine gun to nearly every ten yards. I don't know what
became of my friends Hugh and Bill. They were just beside me, but
when I looked around both were gone. A shell landed just at the side of
me, and I think Hugh and Bill were blown to pieces. I got my wound in
the chest and the fragment came out through my back. I thought my last
day had come. I dropped into a hole, and no sooner had I got in, than

Mack got it through the face. He was able to go back, but I was simply
helpless, as my legs refused to move. Anyhow, I pulled the shovel off
my back and dug a little ridge in the side of the trench. No sooner had I
done this than Fritz started to bombard. One shell fell in the hole in
which I was, but exploded in the opposite direction. Then another came
and landed just above my head, but it failed to go off. Had it gone off I
never would have been here now. I had prayed hard to my God to
deliver me from my enemies and when those things happened I felt my
prayer was heard and that I was going to come through. I was there in
that hole all day and the next night before anyone came near me. At last
one of the 19th Battalion chaps came along and went for a stretcher for
me."
Such are the varying impressions which a battle makes upon various
men. It is no romance, but a grim reality of life and death. Far into the
night we lie awake and ask ourselves, what is the meaning of it all?
At first on the field of