Friday 22 January 2016

A Chance Hit



Saturday 22nd January 1916: When in the front line a dug-out gives a feeling of comparative safety. They are, as the term suggests, pits below the level of the bottom of the trench, lined with boards or corrugated iron to keep the sides from falling in and with a corrugated iron roof on which earth is heaped. Every so often pure chance means that a trench mortar bomb or shell strikes a dug-out full on causing casualties from blast or burial and this happened to the 7th Battalion last evening when a small dug-out was hit killing two of the four occupants as they rested – a lance corporal and a private soldier.

Sources: X550/8/1

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