We have one consolation, and that is, the men of the Allies who were killed did not die in vain, as the objects for which we entered the war have been achieved and the wrongs will be righted.
At last we got in touch with the Germans and dug ourselves in, and then we had another spell of trench duty, until taken away from the Somme and moved up to Belgium to participate in the Paschendale offensive in June, 1917. Of all the fronts I was ever on, Paschendale was the worst. The front included the Ypres salient where fighting had been going on almost incessantly from October, 1914. Neither side made much progress, and during these three years the ground had changed hands many times and was mostly shell-holes. In fact, for miles it was difficult to find a few square yards untouched by shells, and I think that more men were killed in the Ypres salient than any other place of its size in the world. It was impossible to build trenches on this front, and the system of defense was to fortify shell-holes with sand bags, two or three men to a shell-hole. I was in one advance which we made under cover of the biggest barrage thrown over at that time, and when our objective was reached, we manned the shell-holes until relieved.
In September, 1917, I was sent to a bombing school, and went through a course which I passed, and was then qualified to act as a bombing instructor when I arrived back to the battalion. The course lasted one month, and in that time I learned all there was to know about bombs, especially the deadly Mills bomb, with its three and a half to five seconds time fuse. I found bombing more interesting than any other kind of warfare I had yet taken up, and the fact that it was possible to kill or wound a number of Germans with one well-aimed bomb greatly appealed to me. When I returned to the line my rifle was placed as second favorite, the bombs always holding first place in my estimation.
When I arrived back to the battalion, they were at Ploegstreet, or "Plug-street," as we called it, and this front being rather quick, we had a picnic, in comparison to some of the previous places. The trenches at Ploegstreet were well constructed, and fairly dry, and were always considered the best on the British front.