Tuesday 27th
April 1915: Yesterday we
began to pass on the story of a Londoner serving with 1st Battalion who was
wounded in the fighting at Hill 60. His account had reached the point at which
the mines below Hill 60 were about to be blown. He continues: "It was
terrific. It went off like a big volcano. Everything in front of us went black
for a moment, and yet through the blackness we could see distinctly bits of
flying earth. And underneath our own trenches the earth was quivering".
"I was
in the first line of our trenches and it seemed as if the walls of our trenches,
which we had built up in the face of spitting bullets, would collapse".
"Our
sappers had done their work slowly, but thoroughly. They burrowed deep into the
hill from different points, and the extremities of these tunnels which they had
mined were only a few feet from other, directly the German dug-outs of Hill 60
itself".
"When
the blackness came up before our eyes, when the earth was torn up before us,
when clods of it came whistling like cannon balls into our own trenches, or at
least into our own advance trenches, the trouble began".
"I don't
know what happened very much better than do the Germans who were lying there in
advance dug-outs on Hill 60".
"A terrible
sound smote upon our ears. Our guns woke and started talking. Batteries
concentrated themselves suddenly upon the front for six miles. I have seen a
lot of it. I have seen men smile and go suddenly deaf and go on smiling".
"We had
French batteries and a Belgian battery hidden away and, by God! they did
wonderful execution, but the vast majority of the batteries were our own".
"I
thought about this, I mean I felt about this when I got up on the top of Hill
60, that nasty jagged crag which we had left above the crater, and pulled out a
great-coated German from a morass of mud and earth".
"He was
quite dazed. He didn't know me. He had experienced a lot of things, including
ten minutes of our artillery, and he was simply just waiting for the next thing
to happen. So I pulled him out of the earth".
"I know
a lot of you will wonder why we brought such a large number of guns to play
upon Hill 60, and all those little places that lay snugly hidden Behind Hill
60. I will tell you".
"We
started pouring shot into them like hail because we had made up our mind that
we would not allow the German supports - and there were any amount of these -
to creep over the crest of Hill 60 and aid the men whom we had tossed up
towards the skies - I mean their other men who had been holding the position
for Germany on our little side of the hill".
"Most of
you have probably seen firework displays at the Crystal Palace
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