Arthur Douglas Crease Letters, Diaries and Scrapbooks
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| − | That was the condition of affairs that I an inexperienced officer had to deal with. Shortly after I took hold a shell made a direct hit on the trench, killed 5 men, put a M.G. out of action & broke our communications on the left flank ( | + | sole surviving officer was exhausted the Sergt Major was killed, the only surviving Sergt was useless through fatigue & there was no other N.C.O. so far as I knew. The men were all worn out. They had marched several miles through the dark heavily loaded, had made a charge, had been 24 hours under hot fire, had lost all their officers & were under the sole charge of a stranger - the night was pitch dark. We had only three flares & no S.O.S. signals (the carriers having been killed). The trench was narrow & shallow & cumbered with dead & wounded lying on the bottom. |
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| + | That was the condition of affairs that I an inexperienced officer had to deal with. Shortly after I took hold a shell made a direct hit on the trench, killed 5 men, put a M.G. out of action & broke our communications on the left flank (wh was already up in the air) - A German Co. attack was expected at any moment & was delivered later but we beat it off quite easily | ||
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| + | BC Archives, MS-0055 Box 15 File 1 / CREASE FAMILY / Letters from Arthur Douglas Crease to his brother, Lindley Crease, 1916. | ||
Revision as of Jun 18, 2015, 10:38:08 AM
68
sole surviving officer was exhausted the Sergt Major was killed, the only surviving Sergt was useless through fatigue & there was no other N.C.O. so far as I knew. The men were all worn out. They had marched several miles through the dark heavily loaded, had made a charge, had been 24 hours under hot fire, had lost all their officers & were under the sole charge of a stranger - the night was pitch dark. We had only three flares & no S.O.S. signals (the carriers having been killed). The trench was narrow & shallow & cumbered with dead & wounded lying on the bottom.
That was the condition of affairs that I an inexperienced officer had to deal with. Shortly after I took hold a shell made a direct hit on the trench, killed 5 men, put a M.G. out of action & broke our communications on the left flank (wh was already up in the air) - A German Co. attack was expected at any moment & was delivered later but we beat it off quite easily
BC Archives, MS-0055 Box 15 File 1 / CREASE FAMILY / Letters from Arthur Douglas Crease to his brother, Lindley Crease, 1916.