I had to take a pause about twenty yards from the farm and lie flat out on the ground for a moment or two to recuperate sufficiently to finish the journey.  We got him in and put him down in an outbuilding which had been turned into a temporary dressing station.  Shells were crashing into the roof of the farm and exploding round it in great profusion.  Every minute one heard the swirling rush overhead, the momentary pause, saw the cloud of red dust, then “Crumph!” That farm was going to be extinguished, I could plainly see.  I went along the edge of the dried-up moat at the back, towards my guns.  I couldn’t stand up any longer.  I lay down on the side of the moat for five minutes.  Twenty yards away the shells burst round and in the farm, but I didn’t care, rest was all I wanted.  “What about my sergeant and those other guns?” I thought, as I lay there.  I rose, and cut across the open space again to the two guns.

“You know what to do here, Corporal?” I said.  “I am going round the farm over to the right to see what’s happened to the others.”

I left him, and went across towards the farm.  As I went I heard the enormous ponderous, gurgling, rotating sound of large shells coming.  I looked to my left.  Four columns of black smoke and earth shot up a hundred feet into the air, not eighty yards away.  Then four mighty reverberating explosions that rent the air.  A row of four “Jack Johnsons” had landed not a hundred yards away, right amongst the lines of men, lying out firing in extended order.  I went on, and had nearly reached the farm when another four came over and landed fifty yards further up the field towards us.

“They’ll have our guns and section,” I thought rapidly, and hurried on to find out what had become of my sergeant.  The shelling of the farm continued; I ran past it between two explosions and raced along the old gulley we had first come up.  Shells have a way of missing a building, and getting something else near by.  As I was on the sloping bank of the gully I heard a colossal rushing swish in the air, and then didn’t hear the resultant crash....

All seemed dull and foggy; a sort of silence, worse than all the shelling, surrounded me.  I lay in a filthy stagnant ditch covered with mud and slime from head to foot.  I suddenly started to tremble all over.  I couldn’t grasp where I was.  I lay and trembled ...  I had been blown up by a shell.

* * * * *

I lay there some little time, I imagine, with a most peculiar sensation.  All fear of shells and explosions had left me.  I still heard them dropping about and exploding, but I listened to them and watched them as calmly as one would watch an apple fall off a tree.  I couldn’t make myself out.  Was I all right or all wrong?  I tried to get up, and then I knew.  The spell was broken.  I shook all over, and had to lie still, with tears pouring down my face.

* * * * *