Tit for Tat

Hi Folks, well that was a close thing. I had to cut short my report yesterday because the Hun decide to mount a full scale attack on us.

I was in House Number 9 when the shout went up, not that a shout was needed, it was the sudden onslaught of bombs, grenades and shells all going off at once that raised the alarm.

At first we thought the raid was coming in through the end wall of House 10 or down the back yards of the row of houses. But it was not to be. This was a diversionary attack and the main attack came further to the south. When HQ realised what was going on they ordered reinforcements to the front trenches in this area.

The South Lancs Territorials were in the trenches again with us receiving more training. It was as if the Hun knew this and had decided to attack knowing that these soldiers of little experience may panic and he may be able to take advantage of this weakness.

It was a moment sheer chaos and at the same time organised mayhem. Myself and some of the men were ordered into the front trenches to give support. Men were coming up the communication trenches from the rear and others that were in the support trenches had already moved forward. There were runners everywhere and men were manning the firesteps and firing wildly into the Hun lines.

It was all happening in slow motion. we were gathering all the arms we could muster and throwing it at the Hun. He was doing his utmost to throw the same back at us. A great number of Hun grenades were sent over and in return we sent over our supply of jam tin bombs. The rattle of machine guns was deafening.

It was some time later in this barrage and exchange of weapons of destruction that I realised that some of our men had got rifle grenades. I later found out that the Chiefs of Staff back in London had decided that we needed better weapons to counter the Hun. After finding out that the Hun had rifle grenades and seeing how effective they were the Generals had sourced some for us and the Territorials had brought them up with them.

These were similar to the ones we had seen the Hun use and we were mighty glad of them. The only thing is no sooner had we started using them than we run out of them, we had only been supplied with a limited stock. We were told they were known as Mexican Patterns and had been used by the Mexican Military. I didn't care who had used them or where they had come from. I was mighty glad we could hit the Hun with the same level of devastation that he was hitting us with.

Eventually the Hun attack was repulsed and it went quiet again. We were then relieved in the early hours by the Kings own and returned to Billets. A roll call was taken and in this stint in the trenches we had 2 men killed and 16 wounded. the South Lancs had 1 killed and 2 wounded. It didn't seem like a lot compared to the amount of bombs and grenades that were thrown at us but those wounded men had got some pretty serious shrapnel injuries. I'd be surprised if some didn't make it back to Blighty.

Just before going into the Trenches on the 26th we had some reinforcements that had arrived for our Battalion. This was 2nd Lieutenants Martin and Roberts with 40 men. This made the Battalion 21 men over strength, this was about 825 men in total. Now just four days later that over strength had been knocked back, we were back to usual strength. What a bloody war.

Anyway we have got another weapon in our armoury to match the Huns. We have the new rifle grenades, that's if we can get a resupply of them, maybe from the Mexican Army! All I know is that its tit for tat. Anything the Hun comes up with we throw the same straight back at him.

Apologies for the break in the report this week but beating the Hun comes first. I hope to speak to you next week.

Albert x