MORNING SERIAL
ON the night of the 26th all the good gas cylinders were carried to the left flank and if the man who invented them had all the good wishes of the men that were carrying them he would have been in untold agony both before and after his death.
The Old Soldier was in magnificent form and going around the trench during the night I met him and the young soldier carrying one of the cylinders. They had a rest and he swore for some minutes, hardly using the same word twice.
After he had calmed down a bit he asked me if I had any idea for the reason of carrying the blasted cylinders to the left flank. I replied that I had not. It was a hundred-to-one that they were going to send the stuff over again before long; but I had no news over the telephone about it. “Well,” he replied, “If they do send it over again it won’t do no good. The Jerries will simply inhale it and think they are having a champagne supper.”
There was going to be another slam on the 27th and we signallers got to know all about it before some of the platoon officers. Of course we handed over the information to some of our pals, though the men were not supposed to be told until shortly before the attack. At 4 p.m. the gas would be discharged, then a fifteen minutes’ bombardment by our artillery, to be followed by the attack. The enemy seemed to know all about this attack: at 4 p.m. there were fires all along their parapet which would send the gas up over their trenches.
This time the gas went over all right and our artillery carried out their bombardment. The enemy did not reply with any shelling or even fire a rifle shot. Orders now came to stand fast, and at twilight a patrol of Cameronians consisting of one officer and twenty-five men were sent out. They reached the enemy’s barbed wire and then machine-gun and rifle-fire rung out from the enemy’s trench: only two wounded men returned from that patrol.
A drizzly rain was now falling and after being hours on the fire-step orders came that the attack was cancelled. We were not sorry as we all knew that it was a fifty-to-one chance against any man getting in the enemy’s trench.