In these two days I did not go forward for a wander but both Zendher (Lieutenant Oscar Charles Zehnder) & Bowring were up. Zendher was sent up to shoot. He was told to go to a certain little red house you could see from the battery on the side of the ridge taken that morning, so off he went and about 100 yards from it he heard someone whistling behind it & looking round saw someone waving to him very frantically and thought it was someone knocked so went back and was told to his somewhat surprise that the Germans were holding that house and this party that called him back was one of our own frontline posts. So he thought he would go somewhere else as he could see nothing from where. He got up into another old house and was just having a look round when gerzink (?) right into the house, some of the party was hit & he just said “that was a funny sounding shell” when another came. They didn’t look for dignity but bolted straight for a trench about 200 yards away where they saw some others.
Here they got very severely cursed for being artillery & Zendher said “what is biting you”, an officer there turned round & looked back & pointed, soon Zendher saw a flash back behind our guns and about 30 secs, after pursuish crash right along side them. I wont repeat what he said but he had no line through and being a thorough Australian he jumped up & made straight as hard as he could for a pair of horses he had seen about a mile away. He got there very out of breath and demanded a horse. A very scared Tommy, the usual miserable specimen of Englisman was holding them and Zendher just yelled “give me a horse”. Of course any Australian seeing an Artillary officer in a hurry would have done so or at least asked why, but this miserable English boor said in his idiotic English singsong ‘they are the brigade Majors’. Zendher was always very handy with his gun. At Messines things would be deadly quiet & everyone would be reading at night when all of a sudden bang bang, & out would go all the lights shot at by Zendher. This time he was not in an arguing mood so just bang, an inch over the Tommy’s head. The Tommy went flat and Zendher vaulted onto a horse and went full gallop straight across country for his battery. Full gallop through the guns & another 300 yards before he could pull up then turn back and called the battery at the top of his voice all the picturesque language he could think of. It was a 6in how battery. The officer in charge refused to stop so Zendher threatened to shoot the next man who pulled a lanyard and would too. He then banges into their office where a Colonel was doing the shoot, with his revolver still in his hand and was most fluent to the old fool who with his usual Prussian – I mean English arrogance refused to believe that he had blown out ½ a mile of our front line. Zendher told some wonderful tales of hundreds of Australians lying dead round that house and dozens on their way down swore to kill every man in that battery. He then went back to the line and finished his job.
On one of these early days when the balloons were moving one, with evidently an Australian in it did the gamest thing I have ever seen one do. He ran his motor up to within 1000 yards of the enemy. The wind was pretty strong behind and he was out to the full length of his cable and hanging almost over the enemys lines seeing everything. They got very annoyed and were firing almost every gun available at him but couldn’t hit him. He was there about an hour when one of our incompetent air men returning from behind Fritzs lines must have mistaken him for a German balloon and brought him down in flames. There were many unfortunate accidents like that with our planes. The whole country side was strewn with the wreckage of our planes. I must have seen a dozen. And only one Fritz down. In those days our planes were being brought down much more often than the Germans were as far as we could see and very often we would see more of our planes brought down than the papers reported for the whole front for that day. But all prisoners agreed that they were suffering heavily especially in nerves as the result of our bombing of the roads at night, though the Germans agree with our own private opinion, that day bombing and machine gunning is of very little effect and lacks the moral effect of night bombing. Bowring was up forward twice and both times got personally chased by Germans with knives and with bombs along and across the old French trenches and had a really exciting time.
The next day we were to move forward and the Major chose a position about 2000 yards from the line but towards evening the move was cancelled. We had taken possession of a little wooden office to live in. it was about 200 yards from our bit of a dug out, which by the way had only 2 feet of earth on it, but this that was near a cross roads. I had “had” dinner that day there. The first decent meal since the offensive started and then I went back to the telephone & let the Major and Bowring go across. He had been shelling badly all round that day. Soon after the other two had gone across I heard someone outside say “he has got them” & went out to see the fun and saw the roof of the hut gone and a big cloud of dust all around. I thought “that is nice” but didn’t hear anyone calling out so thought they must either be all right or killed. I wasn’t very interested as a matter of fact as immediately after another salvoe (salvo – meaning barrage/bombardment) came over, 4.2 quick dicks daisycutters (4.2” H.V. gun with instantaneous fuzes) firing about 6 at a time and all hitting our house instead of the cross roads 20 yards to the side.
I saw fire, pots, & dinner go up that time & began to think that someone might be hurt, so went across to see. Before I got there I just heard something coming and went flat behind a small pile of road metal on the side of the road – a pile about 2ft high & 3 feet at the bottom. These slippery shells don’t give you very much time. Two together hit the pile of metal fair at the base and shot the whole concern clean over me along the road behind, so I thought I ought to get a move on, another lot came over before I got there but I missed. I saw the house had its roof & far side knocked rotten but there was no one about atall and no bits of meat scattered about as I expected. So I cleared out at the toot, and ran in to them lying in a bit of a gutter about 50 yards away quite alright. A certain number of shells, any up to 6 had burst, one on the roof one in the room where they were and the rest had gone though the roof and far wall and burst just outside. There were four in the room, the chair one was sitting on was smashed to match wood, the table was gone and one of their coats was torn badly but otherwise no damage. We adjourned afterwards to an other little hut about 100 yards on the other side of the road but during the night that got its issue & was looking horribly sick in the morning. So we decided to keep away from that spot for good & our good.
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