Letters from France by C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow) Bean
page 115 of 163 (70%)
page 115 of 163 (70%)
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from, whether thirty yards away or fifty. They knew it must be firing
from behind one of the heaps of rubbish where the entrances of the dug-outs probably were, firing obliquely and to its rear at the men who rushed past it. They chose the heap which seemed most probable, and fired six rifle grenades all at once into it. There was a clatter and dust; the machine-gun went out like a candle. Later they found it lying smashed at the mouth of a shaft there. [Illustration: THE TUMBLED HEAP OF BRICKS AND TIMBER WHICH THE WORLD KNOWS AS MOUQUET FARM] [Illustration: "PAST THE MUD-HEAPS SCRAPED BY THE ROAD GANGS" (_See p. 192_).] The Germans fought them from their rat-holes. When a man peered down the dark staircase shaft, he sometimes received a shot from below, sometimes a rifle grenade fired through a hole in a sandbag barricade, which the Germans had made at the bottom of the stair. Occasionally a face would be seen peering up from below--for they refused to come out--and our men would fling down a bomb or fire a couple of shots. But those on the top of the stair always have the advantage. The Germans were bombed and shot out of entrance after entrance, and at last came up through the only exit left to them. Finding Australians swarming through the place, they surrendered; and the whole garrison of Mouquet Farm was accounted for. Those who were not lying dead in the craters and dust-heap were prisoners. Mouquet Farm was ours, and a line of Australian infantry was entrenching itself far ahead of it. On the ridge the charge had farther to go. It swarmed over one German trench and on to a more distant one. The Germans fought it from their |
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