The rats were well fed

There was that June scrap at Ypres, that was June 2nd, 2nd and 3rd in 1915. I was all through that. And I, I wouldn’t come out, because I tell you the God’s truth, I got drunk. That was a cinch because I had a good, a very good fellow there who was our platoon sergeant, fellow by the name of Holmes, Holmsie. When I came to after Colonel Baker was killed - Colonel Baker had a flask of good whisky on him - he just keeled right over. He got it right between the eyes. And if the sniper had to take something less valuable, or taken something that was less valuable, he would have shot me. But he only had the one bullet, whatever had happened, but I wasn’t meant to go then, see. But it didn’t take me long to learn the rest of the rules. There was no front line. We were taking the brunt of everything and we were just knocking Germans off as they came. Now, the reason that I got hit, blown up rather, that time, it was a 59 shell that got me. The reason that I got that was my own fear of rats. The bombardment was so heavy. It was the most fierce, the fiercest bombardment that was known on the British front during the whole war. But they were crawling under us and trying to get into our pockets, see. And these rats were about nearly as big as cats, you know. They were well fed - corpses all around. I couldn’t take them at all so I couldn’t fire from a prone position on the ground what I was doing. That’s where I got this, it knocked part of the knuckle off there, but that was easy. Later on that day, I was hit with a shell. The shell, and it was because they were still coming at us. These Germans only knew one thing to do and that was do as they were told and they were strictly according to the book and you knew what they were going to do. So, I was standing up. I wasn’t laying down anymore. The rats were getting too close, but I was, my aversion to rats was more than I could take and I, it didn’t affect my nerves or anything, but there were some targets in front of me that needed attending to and I was knocking those buggers down as fast as they would come. And we got rid of a lot of them that way and it turned them back. It was myself and many others so, I thought, a lot of fellows were doing the same thing as I was doing, just shooting the buggers as they came along. See, we were volunteers, we were not conscripts. We were volunteers and there’s a lot of difference, see. We got the conscripts later, much later. But you couldn’t take . . . they’re not the same mettle at all. But anyway, I got out of that. I was wounded twice in Ypres. I was wounded on the second of June and I was wounded again on the third of June, the afternoon of the third. When then we were relieved and I walked out - shrapnel in my right lung, shrapnel in my neck here. Now that was the one that went in the right lung, wound up there, and still there. It still bothers me.