Frank Swannell Diaries: Part I
Diaries of Frank Cyril Swannell Learn more.
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BC Archives MS-0392 - Box 1, Volume 4-5
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2nd Battle of Ypres
36
The main road was 200 ft away & the Germans were trying to get ammunition transports. Very few casualties. Ypres a mile to the South. Still being shelled.
All day in our improvised trenches. Talked with many French soldiers. Wounded coming in all day some on stretchers others walking. The French Red Cross deserve all praise. Trot in with wounded regardless of the shrapnel searching the road. At dark moved to ½ mile further. Dug shelter trenches. I lay in a traverse, shallow, but dry. Shelling going on all night. In the morning some of the boys in six inches water.
2 am before we got our trenches dug. Up at 6pm. no blankets but slept thru exhaustion. Practically no sleep since we left England. Never had my boots off.
Lay in trenches all day. Terrific artillery duel. French battery directly behind us being searched for by the Boches. At one time the Germans centred on our trench. Lieut. Morton crawled in with me & later Metcalfe. Terribly cramped. For 20 minutes the shrapnel had our exact range. A shrapnel bullet struck two inches from my knee. Moved further down at dark, but thru blunder in orders were exposed to heavy shrapnel. Several casualties. Dragged into a traverse by Lieut. McKenzie ("Fighting Man" killed at Festubert). Terrible artillery fire & cramped in corner of trench. Moved at 3 am & occupied shelter trenches along road near canal bridge. Was enfiladed by rifle fire during night & badly scared.
Under fire almost continuously but the Boches can't get the range of out battery (French) 200 yds behind us. Firing right over our heads so close that the rush of air lifts our caps. Chatting with a man from the Infanterie, de Marin, when a German aeroplane passed over head. We both fired at it & exchanged shells "pour souvenir". Wounded, French Infantry & Turcos being brought in all day.
One of the 177 d'Infanterie passed with 3 machine gun bullets thru one thigh & one through the other. Gave him cigarettes & water. Only 12 of his platoon left.
Maj. Peck talks French "Ca-mika chalto maudais maioos".
Desultory artillery fire all night, a "un eclat d'obus". Tears a jagged hole through my great coat. Went to where the 16th made the charge a few days ago, 400 casualties.
To get a new water bottle. Equipment in all direction
BC Archives, MS-0392 Box 1 Volume 4 / FRANK SWANNELL PAPERS / Diary and enclosures, 1915.