The Germans gave us a bomb or two and considerable rifle fire, and we beat it around the corner of the bay.  Then we had it back and forth, a regular seesaw game.  We would chase them back from the barricade, and then they would rush us and back we would go.  After we had lost three men and Lieutenant May had got a slight wound, we got desperate and got out of the trench and rushed them for further orders.  We fairly showered them as we followed them up, regardless of danger to ourselves.  All this scrap through they hadn’t done anything with the machine guns.  One was in our end of the trench, and we found that the other was out of commission.  They must have been short of small-arm ammunition and bombs, because on that last strafing they cleared out and stayed.

After the row was over we counted noses and found four dead and three slightly wounded, including Lieutenant May.  I detailed two men to take the wounded and the Lieutenant back.  That left four of us to consolidate the position.  The Lieutenant promised to return with relief, but as it turned out he was worse than he thought, and he didn’t get back.

I turned to and inspected the position.  It was pretty hopeless.  There really wasn’t much to consolidate.  The whole works was knocked about and was only fit for a temporary defence.  There were about a dozen German dead, and we searched them but found nothing of value.  So we strengthened our cross-trench barricade and waited for the relief.  It never came.

When it began to get light, the place looked even more discouraging.  There was little or no cover.  We knew that unless we got some sort of concealment, the airplanes would spot us, and that we would get a shell or two.  So we got out the entrenching tools and dug into the side of the best part of the shallow traverse.  We finally got a slight overhang scraped out.  We didn’t dare go very far under for fear that it would cave.  We got some sandbags up on the sides and three of us crawled into the shelter.  The other man made a similar place for himself a little distance off.

The day dawned clear and bright and gave promise of being hot.  Along about seven we began to get hungry.  A Tommy is always hungry, whether he is in danger or not.  When we took account of stock and found that none of us had brought along “iron rations”, we discovered that we were all nearly starved.  Killing is hungry work.

We had only ourselves to blame.  We had been told repeatedly never to go anywhere without “iron rations”, but Tommy is a good deal of a child and unless you show him the immediate reason for a thing he is likely to disregard instructions.  I rather blamed myself in this case for not seeing that the men had their emergency food.  In fact, it was my duty to see that they had.  But I had overlooked it.  And I hadn’t brought any myself.

The “iron ration” consists of a pound of “bully beef”, a small tin containing tea and sugar enough for two doses, some Oxo cubes, and a few biscuits made of reinforced concrete.  They are issued for just such an emergency as we were in as we lay in our isolated dug-out.  The soldier is apt to get into that sort of situation almost any time, and it is folly ever to be without the ration.