Free Eyewitness by Garrie Hutchinson Page B

wounded.
    One of my pals who escaped told me that he witnessed a queer incident; he was hiding in a shell hole and he saw a German stand up and beckon to an Aussie in an adjoining hole. The German called out: ‘You come – be prisoner’. The Australian bawled out: ‘You go to b— hell,’ and, getting out of his shell hole, ran for his life. My friend was too full of his own troubles to observe the result. A little while before this the battalion had received a number of new officers from Australia, and, out of 22 of our officers who went into the battle, there were only three that came out with a whole skin. It was such a mix-up that men of different battalions were hopelessly intermingled, and there are no end of men who died without anyone near them knowing who they were. There were deeds done that earned V.C.s, but in the confusion they were overlooked. The 16 th Battalion all gave the palm to a corporal of the 14 th who acted like a superman; but who he was no-one knew; and we never found out. Men like that did not live long that day.
    After the enemy had recovered his trenches (six to seven hours after our boys reached them), he began collecting our fellows who lay all over the place. In some cases the Huns put waterproofs over them to protect them from the dreadful weather, and in some cases our stretcher-bearers were shown the way to where wounded men lay; the general accounts given by the stretcher-bearers showed that they received some assistance from the Huns, and were shown much consideration. Of course this only applied to badly wounded men lying out in front of the wire. When the stretcher-bearers finished their work, they were all firmly convinced that, on this side of the Hun wire, they had left no-one except the dead. Some of the wounded beyond the Hun line lay there until next day, but how they ever lived through that night is difficult to imagine, for it snowed and sleeted, and was bitterly cold. Several boys who have returned from Germany have told us this. Numbers of those who were taken prisoner were marched back through Riencourt and were caught in our barrage, getting a rough handling. Two of them hid until night came on, and then sneaked back into our lines.
    That afternoon, as hardly any of our brigade were left, some of the 13 th Brigade came in to hold our original front-line. The Huns had taken a thousand of our boys prisoners – it was easily the worst disaster that ever happened to our brigade. From noon onwards the Hun just plastered Death Valley with shells, and it was a most unhealthy place. I saw some of the eighteen-pounder crews beat for their lives – of course, only the surplus men; no matter what happened, sufficient men to work the guns stayed by them as long as they were in a condition to be fired. All of us crawled into dugouts in the bank, and even there it was far from safe. There was a dugout about 50 yards down from mine which was considered safe and was crammed full. The unexpected happened, and a shell burst right at the doorway, killing and maiming several. In front of my cubby-hole was a bomb dump, and a shell lobbed almost in it, blowing boxes and bombs all about the place. In many cases the pins had been blown out, and the bombs were going off all around. There were three of us in this place and we did some tall guessing, wondering if any were going to fall in our hole. As we only had a couple of waterproofs over our head, we knew the bombs would tickle us up if they happened to lob on us. After the rumpus had subsided, I looked out, and saw one of the hacks tied up on the other side of the dump from that on which the shell had landed. The poor beast was trembling with terror, and I’ll never forget the grateful look I received from him upon going over to him. There were several traces of blood on him, but they did not seem serious wounds. Some of the bombs had been blown near him, and as he was tied up he had to stand and take all that came his way. I did not know