TRANSCRIPT

"On June 26th, (1917) however when a pair of C Section bearers were relieving those of B, a shell lit clean in among the company, three were killed, two seriously injured and five others were hit. It was the saddest day the 11th had known. Until now they had been lucky, but the run of good fortune by this devil directed shell, had received a sickening arrest: and the deaths had been of such fine men. Somehow at this time it all seemed so particularly wrong, the war, so intensely wicked; a gigantic, wholesale error; that men like this should be struck down in their bloom. The agony of Belgium, the sinking of the Lusitania, these after all were events read of in newspapers; but the taking of proved and beloved comrades, of men with hearts of gold and characters of such beauty as to make oneself seem ugly; this was when, to the individual breasts of comrades, the war struck home."