Journal Entry - April 5th–23rd
We remained at our position and
continued firing on the enemy’s trenches and guns. Enemy aircraft were very
active and often we had to stop firing so that we wouldn’t be spotted.
Our observation station located in
the brewery was a veritable death trap. It was continually shelled, but in
spite of this, we stuck it out for four days. That is until one shell hit
directly on the little cellar. The shell wounded Grogan and Smith (the two
telephonists on duty), while Lieutenant Richie marvelously escaped injury.
Later poor Grogan died, causing Smith to be so shook up that he was sent away.
We are now using the remains of a
house, which we called the “Green House”, for the observation post. It also was
shelled repeatedly, but we had no further casualties. As far as action, nothing
out of the ordinary happened, just the usual give and take between armies.
The batteries at our rear were
shelled occasionally but nothing within harming distance of our guns. I can
hear sounds of continual heavy fighting far away to our left towards Ypres and
to our right towards La Bassee. By the sounds of it, there must be hard
scrapping in progress on the French front.
April 24th
The battery received orders to move
with all speed to Ypres. We marched immediately towards Ypres and billeted for
the night near La Gorgue.
April 25th
Today we had a long march to Odderdum.
I was ordered to go forwards with the billeting party.
There was very heavy fighting going
on at Ypres. I heard that there was a gigantic German assault that caused the
French to retreat, and at the same time, forced the Canadians to retire. The
battle continued to rage fiercely all night. The sounds of heavy artillery fire
were overwhelming.
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