Just like hailstones

First World War Audio Archive

Just like hailstones

Transcript

Machine gun bullets, oh, you couldn’t believe it unless you went

Photograph of Airman with his spouse.

through it. They were just like hail stones come right, oh, about four or five feet in front of you. You couldn’t believe it unless you had experienced it. It was just like hail stones only it was machine gun bullets coming from outposts they had there. So this Bob Irwin, Sergeant Irwin, he was a darn good fellow, an awful good fellow, he come from Fort William. So he had some rum there so he emptied that water bottle of rum and we got the machine gunner, Bob and I did. Then we went on farther and here was a trench along. We had to dominate the railroad track, or the station at Valenciennes. That was our objective, and we got up within about two blocks from this here station, this here trench

Airman with his spouse and child.

that the Germans had there. And I went to cross the street, there was a little brick yard from the street down to the railroad track. We went along and didn’t see this here trench. Here there were a whole bunch of Heinies in there, and gosh, and they start peppering us and we ducked. We got down and threw a mills bomb at them and they beat it up the trench. They were, I guess they were on their way out and so here I, there was a guy there, he was going there. I was laying on a little shell hole there with a gun up on top, firing it. The two off us were firing at one another and at last I threw a mills bomb over.

Airman with his arm around his spouse.

It was about 50 yards from me, I’d say. That got him and the rest of the fellas, the Germans, they up the trench to beat the band and I fired shots up there. And before I went over to this trench here, the civilians there, was one there that kinda beckoned down there so we knew there was some Heinies down in the basement so, we went to the door and hollered at them to come out of there and they wouldn’t come so I threw a mills bomb in down there and, my God, they came out of there then. There was a half a dozen came out of there, out of the basement. And so they had their hands up there and we frisked them and told them to get down to the Allied, down the road. We took the guns and everything from

Two older couples posing for picture.

them. Because you didn’t know whether, and I’ve seen it happen - they’d go down there a little ways and they’d have a machine gun planted in a house or someplace down there and after they got down there, well then you’d be going and they’d turn it on you, shoot you in the back. And so after I’d seen that, I never took any prisoners. I shot as many as I could. I just couldn’t take a chance on them. By the time we got out there, went into our little place to dominate this here station, I only had two guys left.

Description

Mr. Skeates describes taking out machine gun nests and a German trench, and clearing basements on their way to the train station at Valenciennes.

Charles Darwood Skeates

Charles Skeates was born in Ingersoll, Ontario on February 3, 1894. He worked as a barber until his enlistment at Swift Current, Saskatchewan on March 11, 1916 in the 209th Unit, 4th Infantry, despite his original hopes to be called into the cavalry. Arriving overseas in England in October, 1916, he joined the 9th Reserve Brigade at Bramshott and then the 128th at Whitley as a band member. He went into action as a member of the 46th Battalion, 10th Brigade. Mr. Skeates saw action in several major offensives; Passchendaele, Valenciens, Amiens, Drury Mill where he was wounded, and the Oppy Front. Mr. Skeates was a machine gunner during his tour of duty. After the war, he resumed his work as a barber and married Bessie Becker Maitland, on June 13, 1921. During the Second World War, he served as a barber with the RCAF in England, and finished his military service in 1968 after a 13 year stint in the Canadian Army. Mr. Skeates died on December 5, 1982.

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