Alma Russell Letters
Letters of British Columbia men on active service with Canadian and British Expeditionary Forces, 1914-1918. Learn more.
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we had to borrow men from 14, 15 & 16 platoons to make up our strength. We had 6 hours on duty and 6 off duty (12 hours duty a day and 12 off). The bombers had 3 hours (of this 6 hours) in advance sap and other three in main firing line. As we were so short of men, I volunteered to do my 6 hours in advance post off the reel. I was in the advance post the whole time our platoon was on duty in firing line. There are 2 men in each advance post, & both men must be bomb-throwers. I am one of the platoon’s bombers. The only thing that troubled me was that I had nothing but French bombs to throw. I had never thrown one of these before but had them explained to me. But I think the British article is absolutely the best on the market. Fortunately, for me and my mate we were rather far for bomb throwing. The germans threw 5 or 6 hand grenades at our sap but they all fell short. I was looking through our periscope at dawn one morning and trying to locate a german sniper who was knocking the dirt off the top of our parapet, when a hand grenade landed on top of our parapet a little to my right. Beyond getting covered with dirt and my helmet blown off, however, I was none the worse, but this was the nearest any of their hand grenades landed. They fired a lot of rifle grenades at us, however. These are deadly weapons and unlike some of their hand grenades explode a large amount of shrapnel.
The germans also have the deadly trench mortar - hellish things with an explosion like a mine going up. It is a great strain on the nerves hearing these dropping down at night and not knowing where they are going to fall. In the daytime you can see the mortars quite easily. Listen for the german mortar gun and then when it fires you see it coming, it looks like a huge oil can and rises to a great height, about 300 to 500 ft and then comes down with a great rushing sound (the noise of the fuse) over the British lines. The
BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 5 / RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873 - 1964. Victoria; librarian. / Letters and associated items from Private Jack A. Gunn, 1915 - 1916.