18th June 1917 Monday

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There’s never a good time to suffer an air raid, but at half three in the morning it must be particularly harrowing.  The sound of an aircraft overhead would be met by thinking is it ours or theirs? It didn’t take long to find the answer.

“About 3.30 a.m. on the 18th June a Hun aeroplane flew over very low and dropped ten bombs all around us. The noise of the crashes was terrific and soon we were busy – Capt. Burke and I – attending to a score or more of seriously wounded men – most of them Seaforth Highlanders from a neighbouring camp. We had to amputate one poor fellow’s leg. The Huns enjoyed themselves shelling all the camps around here, with 16″ high velocity shells, nasty things which arrived so quickly that you had no time to seek cover. They fairly scared one! And at night the bombing aeroplanes kept us awake so that our nerves soon got  ‘jumpy’. How we escaped I do not know, for shells and bombs dropped all round us by day and by night, causing numerous casualties.”

Big Bertha German 16 inch gun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(howitzer)

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