Our ammunition was exhausted, not a shell remaining, and we grabbed our rifles, retreating with the rest, and sniping and dropping as we fell back.  We took parts of the guns with us to prevent Fritz making use of it, and threw them into a shell hole filled with water, as they were too heavy to carry and manipulate our rifles at the same time, and that ability was much more precious to us at that particular time than the gun-parts.  One of my chums had been wounded in the pit before we retired, and was later taken prisoner, and two of my other chums were killed in the general retreat.  My pals with the other guns, forty feet to our right, did not get all of their ammunition off before the Boches were upon them, and they, too, died there; they were incinerated alive in their little pit by smoke shells that started everything ablaze as they exploded.

The retreat ended in Maple Copse Woods, where we established ourselves and held the Germans, they resting at the edge of Sanctuary Woods.  Under orders, I and my partner started for Zillebeke, about 400 yards back from Maple Copse, where we established an observation station, with the necessary telephonic communication to headquarters, which, when done, was taken in charge by a relief party from another battery, and I returned to Belgian Gardens at 11:30 A.M., where I was put in charge of another gun crew.

I thought I had done a fairly good morning’s work and was hoping Fritz would behave himself for the balance of the day, but my hope was a delusion, for inside of half an hour Fritzie thought he would like to see the scenery in Maple Copse, and came on for another try.  Heavy firing began, lasting about five minutes, and over they came again.  We opened up heavily with our battery of four guns, throwing a barrage in his front as best we could; mine was the only battery left working on this particular sector.  Our fellows went out and met Fritz in a hand-to-hand argument, backing up their contention so thoroughly with the cold steel that they sent him flying back to the line he had established at Sanctuary Woods.

But it was necessary, in order to keep him quiet, to keep up a barrage.  Our ammunition had run down to a point where we had only fourteen shells left, and we received orders to hold two high explosive shells, one for the muzzle and another for the breech of the gun, to put it out of business in case they broke through.

If it became necessary to resort to the expedient of blowing up the gun, it would be done by placing a shell in the breech of the chamber, the breech closed, another shell inside the muzzle, the lanyard fastened to the firing lever and strung out of the front pit door for a distance of 25 or 30 feet to a large tree standing at our rear, fastened to the tree, and when retreating pull it from there, blowing the gun and the gun pit into as many pieces.

We took all precautions when it became likely that we were going to be overpowered and there was a chance of Fritz taking our gun.  It is rarely necessary to take this precaution nowadays, nor has it been for the last two years; the shoe is on the other foot now and the returns showing the number of heavy German guns that we have captured within the last two years and a half, together with the fact that not a single British gun has been lost, shows how well the work is in hand on the Western Front.