I flew into a shell hole

We used to patrol behind the lines, or for deserters, or maybe now and again some of the bloody Jerries broke through in some place or the other and that sort of thing. That’s where my real war experience began, because, on occasions when we’d be out on patrol, well, one thing happened. We were behind (inaudible) and in those days in the trench warfare, they used to have behind the lines what was known as the observation balloons. We had them on our side too. Balloons, oh maybe seven or eight hundred thousand feet up in the air. And some poor devil up there in that balloon with field glasses scanning what was going on behind our lines, and their fellas were doing the same behind their lines. And of course when they see a patch, well maybe, a patrol consists mostly of six, six troopers and one sergeant or something like that. You see that, first thing you notice, sons of guns, they started bombing us with the confounded shrapnel. Now the shrapnel they had in those days, ‘16, weren’t as sophisticated as the later ones were, but they were bad enough and on one occasion, the damn shrapnel, this guy spotted us and shrapnel landed in between the two of us. We used to be, oh, about that far apart, horses, and fortunately for me, one piece broke and hit my tin helmet and knocked me silly and the other piece, the other one exploded between - shattered the bowels of the horse and he bucked of course, and jeez I went through the bloody air and landed in this damn shell hole. And I’d been there yet if it hadn’t been, if it hadn’t been that - cavalry cloak in those days was something like a great big wide skirt. Of course it had to be when you (inaudible). If it hadn’t been that some poor other guy standing there and saw me and grabbed a hold of the back of my collar. He pulled me like this. I was unconscious and he stood me up against the (inaudible) and finally, finally Knox came along crawling on his tummy and he (inaudible) all the horses, killed them and then hauled me out and then the other chap out of the shell hole. Now that’s one of my memories, very clearly.