By a strange coincidence, on the same day Lieut. Jack Gamlen (OBLI) wrote to us of meeting Capt. Leslie Grundy (late of York & Lancaster Reg., now with 90th Machine Gun Corps), Leslie also wrote to us of an incident that had occurred the previous evening, when he was sitting in a small cellar of a largely demolished house.

25.11.16 “I heard the swish of a shell and heard a loud detonation. I went up the cellar steps to ask how far off it had fallen and was told that it had fallen about 200 yards away and that only a few splinters had come our way.

I had got to the top step of the cellar when I found a man in my way at the top. I had just touched him and was going to tell him to move aside when we all heard a shell coming. We all ducked instinctively, the man on the top step falling on me. I had lost my balance, but before my feet had left the step I was on, there was a brilliant flash and a terrific explosion.

I scrambled out from under the fellow who was on top of me and found myself at the bottom of the steps with the place full of dust. There were some cries coming from above. I lit a candle and found that the centre part of the roof of the cellar had fallen in and had smashed the table, but had missed the officer and the two servants who were in there and that they were only a bit dazed.

I then went up above and found men lying all over the place. I flashed my torch around and saw that five were obviously dead and that about six more were lying about groaning. Another man and myself got the two worst cases into the cellar and started bandaging them up.

I went up with another fellow and we got the third man down. As we were going down the stairs, another shell came and burst about 20 yards to the flank and, I found afterwards, smashed in half another cellar on top of three men, also killing three of the limber horses and wounding the fourth…

The shelling stopped and we went up to count the damage.

Right on top of the cellar was a huge crater, 6 ft. across and going right through the 3 ft. of bricks on top of the roof. It was not 6 ft. from where my head had been. Two small beams had apparently saved me. They were riddled with splinters, but apparently the force of the shell had gone in another direction.

Five men were lying round the entrance dead. Three of them were in my company and two belonged to the other company. One of my best sergeants and two of my best men. The two others were guides.

We took the personal effects of the five to send to their homes and put them in a shell hole not far away. We buried them this morning. The three horses are still lying across the road. Two of my wounded have since died in the dressing station. In all I lost about ten men killed and wounded, and the other company about seven.

Incidents like this are happening every day on all parts of the front and they happen pretty frequently around here, but you seldom hear about these small details, so I thought I would tell you about one of them – not so much for the morbid interest of the thing as to give you some idea of what war is like…

I am very fit at present with the exception of slight deafness and headache caused by the explosion.”

Certainly, such details are not to be found in our newspapers or, from what Jack Gamlen told us, Brigade Intelligence Reports either.