I was detailed in charge of the repair party. One
day during the great Ypres battle, about ten o'clock in the morning, the
bridge was smashed and I took my party up and made the necessary
repairs. We had hardly returned to cover when the bridge was smashed
again, and again we rushed out and fixed it up. As we ran, three men
forged ahead of me and got to the middle of the thirty-foot structure; I
was about twenty feet behind them, the rest of the party immediately
behind me. I was shouting an order to them, when a shell exploded in the
middle of the bridge, killing all three. I was saved by twenty feet.
In the late afternoon one day of the battle, I was resting in a hole I
had burrowed under a sand-bank; about 200 men were burrowed in the same
bank in the same way. A monster shell struck the bank immediately above
me, upheaving the ground and completely burying me and half a dozen
others. I was dug out in a half smothered condition, but soon was able
to assist in the work of resurrecting the rest. The only casualty that
occurred in that incident was innocently caused by myself; as I was
digging, my shovel struck the leg of an officer, inflicting such a gash
that when resuscitated he had to go to hospital.
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