Absolutely the most wicked weather last night boys outside all night. Rain snow sleet & driving wind. Hard pounding rifle grenades & trench mortar bombs are sent over in profusion. Hell opens again at 4:30 am by our artillery at Hill 60. A most hideous & frightful roar & noise. A rifle shot can scarce be heard. Aeroplanes very active. Fly low. Our feet are wet and life almost unbearable.
As I am standing outside the dugout a shrapnel bullet passes my neck and buries itself deep into the sandbag. Again I miss death by a rifle grenade. 3 burst simultaneously near dugout in fire trench. All night there is a horrible hell & din going on.
It rains all night and the misery – pitiful as we stand out in it all through the night.
*Hill 60 – A heap of soil just south of Ypres in Flanders made from soil removed from a cutting for the Ypres-Comines railway. The hill was a strategic observation point overlooking Ypres and Zillebeke making it a valuable target and thus the area of multiple battles throughout the duration of the war.
“Hill 60, 1915” by E Wyrall – Wyrall, E. (1921) The History of the Second Division, 1914–1918 Vol I (N & M Press 2002 ed.), London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Retrieved on 13 November 2013. ISBN: 1-84342-207-7. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hill_60,_1915.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Hill_60,_1915.jpg
