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Writer's pictureCLIVE WARD
May 1, 20212 min read

THE RETREAT

Updated: Jul 2, 2021



Following their retreat from the woods, those who had made it safely back to the trench saw a figure emerging out of the darkness staggering towards them. It didn’t take them long to realise it was a member of their own company, he hadn’t been with them long and must have got cut off from the rest of the company in No Man’s Land. He’d been badly hit by machine gun fire. His lower jaw was a shattered mess and he’d also been shot several times in his shoulders and legs, it was hard to believe he was still walking. He made it back to the trench and received immediate medical care. The soldier couldn’t speak because of his injuries, but before he was sent to the field hospital, he wrote a note. ’I’m not sad, I made it back, some didn’t. I’m happy we took the position and proud I was part of it.’ At daybreak the next morning there was a lull in the shelling that had been going on all night. Out across No Man’s Land, the wood, which they had so bravely taken the night before, had been obliterated. All that remained now were isolated stumps to indicate where the trees had once stood. The ground itself was scarred and pitted, a cemetery for the unburied dead.


It was always a tense moment in the trenches when the roll call was made after such a charge. The number of missing men was revealed by the absence of their voices. C Company had lost fourteen men and a further thirty-two were injured. Three young men answer Kitchener’s call. A close friendship and a dark sense of humour is the only thing that makes life bearable in the horror they face in the trenches.

In memory of my Uncle, Private Bertram Allen Ward, 10th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters. Lest we forget. TRENCH 31 By Clive Ward, Veteran. www.clivewardauthor.com






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