I go up to the craters. Very muddy and in some places it’s 3 feet deep. I go overland in full view of the enemy into Watling Crater. Risky but information is necessary.
In afternoon to 4th Div. front.
Enemy shell Bde. Hdqts. A shell burst only 20 feet from here. He is using an old [Paltim] shell and not the Field gun [unist…..]. No damage done.
*As bombs rained down on the Western Front, thousands of craters opened up on the battlefields. Meteorites had created the occasional crater before, but large-scale bombing was a new phenomenon on earth, which two geographers (Joseph Hupy & Randall Schaetzl) have called “bombturbation.” Bombs actually shattered bedrock and created the bizarre, dimpled landscape of modern day Verdun. Artillery shells could blast craters up to 30 feet wide and many feet deep. Land mines were even more powerful, creating holes up to 160 feet deep. Curiously, artillery shells did more damage to the ground in WWI than WWII in the same area. That’s because early artillery shells were designed to explode on impact, but more advanced detonators during WWII allowed shells to explode in the air. (www.gizmodo.com)
