But you can't dodge a bullet. It gives you a most uncanny feeling to be taking a short cut overland, and suddenly to hear a "ping-thud" just beside you, thus learning that some German is trying to pot you as you potted an innocent red deer on your last hunting trip. Or you may be walking quietly through apparently safe trenches, maybe dreaming of your loved ones at home, when a bullet thuds into the trench wall a few feet from your head, insolently spattering mud into your face. Then you know you are alive only by the grace of God and the poor aim of the German.
But, despite these risks, all take the chance of going overland to lessen a quarter-mile trip by one hundred yards, or to miss a particularly muddy bit of trench. Any day you choose when you are five or six hundred yards from the front line you may see scattered parties of men crossing in the open.
The regimental aid post of the ---- Canadian Battalion in October, 1916, when they were doing their tour in the lines, could be reached in two ways--one by trench, a roundabout route of over a mile; the other one-half mile by trench and one-quarter overland. The former route was never employed, except on regular relief days, officers and men passing daily the one-quarter mile overland, only about six hundred yards from the enemy front line. The field ambulance stretcher bearers made the trip twice daily, and one day when I was crossing over with their sergeant I asked him why the German snipers did not hit us.
"Oh, 'Heiny' is too busy keeping himself out of sight to notice us," was the careless reply. But at times those crossing this space heard a bullet whistling nearby, or ping-thudding into the ground close to their feet!
After a raid by our troops one early winter's morning when I had been attending the wounded for some time I came up to take a breath of air. A trench led from this cellar of mine some two thousand yards to a village of reasonable safety, but the road cut off two or three hundred yards of that distance. This road was in plain sight of the Germans, yet some of our wounded Tommies, walking cases, were leading a crowd of five or six wounded Huns by the road, the party altogether numbering ten or twelve. As we watched them, suddenly, within a few yards of them, burst two shells. All the men broke into a double and jumped into a trench beside the road while a few more shells fell about. It is an ironical truth that the only members of the party hit were three of the Germans.