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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the top of the hill, they could see everything we did. About 9.30 P.M. a few shells started coming our way, one lit just outside my Bivy and woke me up. Bill Casey was lying outside and one came through the parapet and burst near him, then another burst about fifteen feet behind him, so we decided to move down the trench. Then things began to happen, shells came in bunches, you could move about six feet, when another would come along, and down you would go, and stick your nose in the mud. My Section had a narrow escape. Creswell was in a little Bivy, and five men in a big one, about five feet away. I was behind Creswell, and three men were coming along. Suddenly a shrapnel came through the parapet, and exploded all the ammunition on one side of Creswell, about 75 rounds. His blanket and overcoat were torn to pieces, his bayonet bent, and water bottle smashed, the bottom knocked off his mess tin, and the heel taken off his right boot, and all it did was to wound him in the stern, and knock the rest of us down. While we were helping him, another came behind us, and winged Bill through the thigh. If it is clean it will not amount to much. Soon after another man was hit in the thigh. That was the last casualty in the Platoon, though that was not the German's fault. We were all properly scared, and did not mind admitting it. That night every now and then a Battery on our right would fire a couple of salvos, into trenches round us. Next day we kept quiet and only a few shells came our way, though other trenches got plenty. Then they picked on us again and wounded three bomb throwers attached to us. The trenches were badly made and the Germans could enfilade them, of course we work all night fixing them up, and are greatly helped by the fact, that all under my Section is one huge grave, and when you dig you find bodies in all positions, right at the head of my Bivy, a foot was sticking out. Still we have about
BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 10 / RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873-1964. Victoria; librarian. / Selected letters from Sergeant John Raymond McIllree, 1915.