ON BEING BLOWN UP.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15464, 17 December 1915, Page 8

ON BEING BLOWN UP.

A SUFFERER'S DESCRIPTION OF

HIS SENSATIONS.

(From tho "Westminster Gazette.")

Having survived, the interesting, though in these days unfortunately not unique, experience of being the centre of a bomb explosion. I find the general public seems as a rule intensely interested to know what it feels like to be blown up. My reply always is that it is inliuitely preferable to being blown up by the brigadier. There, is something so satisfying about being blown up l>y a, bomb. You feel you have at last really accomplished something, and enter upon ,a whole new field of sensations and experiences. This is what happened in my case.

One Sunday afternoon I was gently placing in position for firing one of the rocket-like grenades that are shot from rifle-barrels, and explode <m contact W'.th tho ground, when suddenly there was a tremendous .shattering rear, a blaze of blinding red light, in the middle of which 1 found inybcll" realising that something had occurred, and wondering if I had been by any chance hit. and then i pulled myself together several yards away troni tho place in which I had been standing. Dialogue somewhat as follows:—'Miring a stretcher there; hurry up!" It is peculiar how strange it sounds when your own stretcher is ordered. "I suppose I'm hit; where is it:'" "That's all right, sir; no, don't look down."' "Oh, hand, is it? Blown to blazes, I suppose." "Yes, sir," Then comes the sensation of apparently endless miles down communication trendies and down hard, jolty roads, which one has travelled so many times before on one's own boot-leather. Long before tho motor-ambulance is reached the swinging jolt of the stretcher has become such an obsession of the nerves that one could cry aloud, not from tho Main of it, but from its mere repetition. Then the sensation of real jolting over the French roads, and you curso the cobbles as you never cursed them before, even when in lull marching kit at the heat of day. And lastly, the sweet sensation of utter rest in a snow-white hospital ward, such rest as you have not known for months that iiave seemed years, a :lo;ic of n'orphia and the glorious knowledge that you have ''done your bit," and that your name will surely appear ;n ;he Roll of Honour next week.

.So much for the excitements of being blown up, but I do not think they compare for a moment with tho moral torments of the man who is nearly, but not quito. blown skywards. One nico dark night not so Very long ago. an officer and sergeant set out from our trench with the object of reconnoitring the German lines, which at this point, were some tw<> hundred yards distant. The expedition was aimost too successful, for, without tho slightest warning, the connlo found themselves on the very brink of an advanced and excellently concealed German work, the existence of which had never even been suspected. In tho words of tho officer concerned, "We flopped." But the flop was not quick enough. Fritz had evidently been roused by their approach, for as they lay there, afraid to breathe, "with tho coldest feet in tho whole wide world," a nasty heavy bomb landed smack in the middle of the subaltern's back, and thero it remained, without exploding, the victim much too terrified of tho possible consequences to dare shake it off. Still they lay like mummies, "there being nothing olso to do." Then came a second bomb, hit tho sergeant on tho boot, rolled some yards down a heavensent slope, and thero blew up. numbing tho legs of both men. By this time, the owners of tho trench had evidently satisfied themselves that they were a victim to "trench nerves,'' a complaint common to all troops after continuous holding of trenches, when a man begins to "see things" at night, and no more bombs were thrown. For fire more racking minutes tho two lay still, "there being nothing clso to do," and then, feeling they had enjoyed sufficient advertisement for one evening, crept silently homewards. Yet compared with some that experience is tameness itself. \