We also met some marines who had been in the trenches four days, losing any amount, They asked us, with haggard faces, if we had any big guns, and when we told them they simply said "Oh! Christ!"; their despair was horrible to see.
Well, we marched on to the outer trenches until nightfall, and were going to relieve the marines already entrenched, but it found to be too risky so was indoned until the morning. We slept or rather tried to sleep behind a barn when we were surprised by three shells falling just on the left of us. Here we had three killed. I kept awake all the time, listening to the shells overhead and responses from the Belgian artillery, Winston Churchill in the Trench.
In the morning, Winston Churchill came up in a motor car and went to the marines in the trenches about 200 yards in front of us. He ordered them to evacuate them as the Germans were advancing on the centre about 30,000 strong, we only having 6,000 between us. We retreated behind the marines, and dug trenches about three miles further in; we covered these for protection against shrapnel.
We had no sooner done this than 'a Taube aeroplane hovered over us and dropped a smoke bomb, then we knew the Germans had got our range. We crouched low in our trenches and made the most of it, shells falling now at the front of us then at the rear, one penetrating the shelter on the right of our trenches and killing ten men (1) who are supposed to be prisoners in Germany.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.