This game's for keeps

We stayed in the tunnel all night and the air was so bad that a candle couldn’t be lit, so many people in there. In the morning, before daylight we took up our positions for to wait for the barrage to open up. A chap near me, he broke down, started to cry. The sergeant was trying to hush him up. But just about then, the barrage started to creep, so away we went following it. I only went about 20 feet and I saw a fellow about my age, the bullet had gone in his forehead and the grey came out, and I had two thoughts; your brain is grey and they play this game for keeps. So, I followed along, I fired a few shots about where I thought would be about the height of a man, just for kicks. The trenches that we had figured was there was all plowed up, you couldn’t tell where a trench was. You could see planks and everything laying around and dead Germans. In fact, no opposition, just following the barrage. So there was a high mound of dirt. One of our officers appeared from somewheres carrying a cane and he motioned four of us to follow him and he climbed up over this high ground. We could have gone around it but privates don’t tell officers what to do. So, we just got on top and it was being swept with machine gun fire. He was instantly killed with two. The end of my rifle and bayonet dropped off, a bullet went right through the barrel and the steel splinters hit me in the neck and I was trying to . . . threw me back and as my leg came up a bullet went in and plowed along the bottom and came out about a foot through my flesh and made quite a hole. So I crawled on my hands and knees down the other side and the one fellow didn’t get hit, I said, “What’s the matter with my backside.” He said, “You got a hole in it.” So, I started hobbling back then and another wounded fellow waved to me. There was a man buried to his waist in the mud. So three of us got a plank and we pulled him out. I think we stretched him but we pulled him out. And I looked at a sergeant of ours laying there, he had 16 bullet holes in his arms and legs but he still was breathing, but there was nothing you could do. Another fellow had his foot blew off and (inaudible) around it, he was ok. So six Germans appeared from some place. I motioned them ahead and I tagged along til I got in the dressing station. They fixed my wound up and we sat on a bench and a fellow inoculated us for lockjaw. They put an indelible cross on our heads. One fellow, not badly wounded, next to me whispered, “What’s that cross for? ” He said, “Those the ones we think are gonna die.” That really made him look solemn. But he was only kidding. It was so that they knew you was inoculated. He really looked solemn when he said it was the ones we thinks are gonna die. I knew what it was for.