—3—

but no sooner was I down when Mr. Hun got me through the leg. It was a funny sensation, just as if someone had hit me a hard blow with a hammer. I turned round and shouted to Sgt Dick, who was with me – the other men of the patrol about twenty yards back, and said to him “I’m hit, Dick, you had better get the men back”. He immediately jumped up and ran to me – it was a great wonder that he was not sniped. He at once tried to put a bandage on my wound, under great difficulties, because we both had to lie so flat and we could not move as the Huns were sniping at us for all they were worth, the reason being that when I was hit my steel helmet fell off and rolled forward and Mr. Bosche, seeing it, went on sniping at it. At last Dick noticed this, and seeing a fallen branch got hold of it and pulled the helmet in, at which the sniping stopped. It was a rotten day, drizzling and sleeting, and rather cold, so Dick pulled off his leather jerkin, after some wonderful manoeuvering, and placed it over my leg, after which we lay patiently thinking every minute that the Huns would appear over the little crest and take us prisoners, when all of a sudden our “Stokes Trench-mortar” opened up, and the shells were falling rather too close to us for our liking, thinking that we would be blown up every minute.

Dick said he would crawl back and stop the trench-mortar and also get a stretcher party ready to get me back, as soon as darkness set in. He was a man of his word, because no sooner was it dark when he appeared with a stretcher and party, and I can assure you it was some job getting me through the trees and over the rough ground. They took me to the reserve trench where the doctor bandaged me up,

BC Archives, MS-1901, Box 1, File 6, RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873–1964. Victoria; librarian. Selected letter from Lieutenant Gordon Patrick Heinekey, 1917.