At last the cannonade developed into a roar on our left, and we realised that any show was there, and not on our sector. Then up came the quartermaster with some boots for Dixon and me, and we all went into the dug-out, where was a splendid fire. And we stayed there, and certain humorous remarks from the quartermaster suddenly turned my feelings, and I felt that the tension was gone, the thing was over; and that outside the bombardment was slackening. In half an hour it was ‘stand down’ at 7.40.
I was immensely bucked. I knew I should be all right now in an attack. And the cannonade at night was a magnificent sight. Of course we had not been shelled, though some whizz-bangs had been fired fifty yards behind us just above ‘Redoubt A,’ trying for the battery just over the hill.
My chief impression was, ‘This is the real thing.’ You must know your men. They await clear orders, that is all. It was dark. I remember thinking of Brigade and Division behind, invisible, seeing nothing, yet alone knowing what was happening. No news, that was interesting. An entirely false rumour came along, ‘All dug-outs blown in in Maple Redoubt.’
I had sent Evans to Bray to try and buy coal: he returned in the middle of the bombardment with a long explanation of why he had been unable to get it.
‘Afterwards,’ I said. Somehow coal could wait.
All the while I have been writing this, there is a regular blizzard outside.”
Such is my record of my first bombardment. The Manchesters, who were in the front line, suffered rather heavily, but not in Maple Redoubt. No dug-outs were smashed in at all there, though Canterbury Avenue was blocked in two places, and Old Kent Road in one. The Germans came over from just north of Fricourt, but only a very few reached our trenches, and of them about a dozen were made prisoners, and the rest killed. It was a “bad show” from the enemy point of view.
And now I will leave my diary. These first impressions are interesting enough, but later the entries became more and more spasmodic, and usually introspective. The remaining chapters are not exactly, though very nearly, chronological. From February 6th to March 8th I was Sniping and Intelligence officer to the battalion. Chapters VIII, IX, and XII describe incidents in that period. Then on March 8th Captain Dixon was transferred as Second-in-Command to our ----th Battalion, and on that date I took over the command of “B” Company, which I held until I was wounded on the 7th of June. These were the three months in which I learnt the strain of responsibility as well as the true tragedy of this war.