Burgoyne Diaries by Burgoyne Gerald Achilles;

Author:Burgoyne, Gerald Achilles;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Europe / Ireland
ISBN: 4528302
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Published: 2015-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

February 24th

Hard frost last night and snow showers this morning. The French Summary states that from information collected all along the line, from the sea to Switzerland, the enemy seem short of ammunition. In our Summary it is stated the enemy are using dum-dum bullets, and reverse the bullets in the cartridges, firing them base foremost. Several clips of cartridges with bullets reversed in the cartridges were found on a dead German. This accounts for the bad wounds sometimes made. All leave is to stop after March. What a good thing I get my leave in time! But I expect this is only a temporary order, and that leave will be opened again when the present tension is relaxed. Head Quarters of my Company are in the same corner estaminet we’ve been in several times before. We have a decent comfortable sitting room (in which two officers sleep) and I have a bedroom and nice bed off the sitting room, with washstand etc. Quite a treat. My other officers sleep across the way. Our servants share the family living room and store where they cook for us. The place has the drawback of being rather noisy. The Belgian inhabitants scream instead of talk, and there are several screaming children to add to the general row. One of our fellows passed a trench carrying a huge jar of water. A dirty ruffian yelled out to him, ‘Hi Murphy, give us a mouthful of that water’. ‘I will not, but I’ll give ye a canteenful if ye like!!!’ Another of my subalterns was bothered by a miserable man who came up to him in the trench with a, ‘Please Sir, I’ve got dysentery’. ‘Oh! have you? Sergeant, what’s the matter with this man?’ ‘Nothing Sir, that I know of, but he’s eaten two tins of jam today!’ One result of the fight on December 14th was the capture, by the Royal Scots, of one of the enemy’s forward trenches, and this Battalion had to hold this particular trench for three or four days. The way to it led through a gateway about which there were many casualties, and which is now known as Hell Gate. It is watched by a German maxim, and the German trenches are not eighty yards away. The gate is filled with barbed wire obstacles, and is awkward to pass through in the dark.

Kearns gave me an amusing account of his platoon going into this trench. They got tangled up in the wire and it was, ‘Mick me trousers is ripped’, or ‘Murphy mind the wire will ye’, ‘Jock me coat’s cot, lift the tails for me’, all within a few yards of that – maxim, and Kearns knew it was there.

He simply stood and shivered. Daren’t call his men what he’d have liked; and the row they made; dropping their rifles, jangling the wire, tripping up, cursing, laughing. Fortunately I think the Germans had been so terrified by the attack of the two days previous, that probably they had left this trench.

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