28th October 1917
“It was bright moonlight when we passed through & I’ll never forget the sight. It was weird & awful. The place was quiet as death except for the hollow echo of our tramping as we straggled along the cobbley streets, everywhere there were strange shapes & shadows, and everywhere silence. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, & yet what a relief it was to get away from it.”
“We shifted frequently & usually at night & every time we were landed in an unspeakable quagmire & told to make ourselves comfortable, which meant digging a trench & huddling into it. If it rained, & it nearly always did, we just had to try & coil up under our tin hats & hope for a drying day tomorrow.”
“It was just breaking day when our guns opened the bombardment & we were “over the bags” & into it. Fritz was expecting it & his machine guns soon began to put in their protest & his bullets were singing a regular Hymn of Hate around our heads.”
“All night long we could hear our wounded calling for stretcher bearers, & a lot of them were still calling when day broke.”
“We felt suspicious at first but our anxiety for our own wounded prevented us firing on it. His stretcherbearers soon appeared & then ours ventured out…As the day wore on we got more faith in him & our chaps were wading about all over the show. The artilleries carried on as usual but not a shot was fired from the trenches..”
Len Shepard – Letter 68 – No.7 General, France.
Read full letter here.