MY FIRST SHOT
I expect that every infantry soldiefll remembers the circumstances in which he,! fired his first shot at the enemy. To me j it was a momentous occasion; I hndi liained and lived, marched and dug, for ,1 ! a twelvemonth with the one object of! i getting fit to lake my place in the ■ trenches, but I had not done anything, up till then which actually endangered', tho life of n German. But with my;, first shot all that was changed; I was! an enemy to be reckoned with,. and inj return for risking my life -I nad a j chanoe of taking the life of a Hun. j I My first shot was fired on a Decem- j ber night in 191$. How carefully I j charged the magazine of my rifle, and i transferred one round to the breech! ■ How firmly I planted myself on the firestep and rested my rifle on a wet sandbag, taking careful aim at a spot where'; I reckoned the German parapet would j be—l had not seen it up to then, for it was my first night in the trenches. How' loud the report sounded to mo • when at length 1 pulled the trigger, in ; the silonce which is nowhere more pro- I found than n't night in the trenches in . flio intervals of firing. And the flash | seemed sufficient to indicate my exact ; position to the enemy though he. was 400 yards away. i ' Of coiiMj nothing would suit me after that but that I must, fire away nine | more rounds straight off the reel, until 1 a stream of machine-gun bullets playing ; along our parapet showed that I had j drawn the attention of some vigilant ■ sentry to my efi'orts to annihilate the J German Army. / ! Since Iheii I have always been inter- \ ested in watching new men fire their ! first round at tho Germans—generally at ! night. ! One ajid all attach great importance ■ to the event; some men fire as soon as j possible, in a "Now I am really here j let's get busy" spirit, wholly admirable; j others wait till the breaking dawn gives j them a nioro or less distinct target. One ' man, I remember, saiil to me as he | mounted tho firestop, "Now I'll fire a shot," as much ns to say, "This war has gono on long enough, it's time it was stopped." • i I also recollect one man in the old ' trench warfare days who heard a,cornet ! being played in tho German line, during j his first, night in the trenches.. "I'll i soon stop that," he said. Sure enough, j no moro was heard of the cornet after j he had fired, anil he was as proud as a i peacock for days afterwards, claiming j in all seriousness that he had winged j that German musician, or, at' I cornet.—S. T. \\\ in the "Daily Mail." j
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Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 43, 15 November 1918, Page 5
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486MY FIRST SHOT Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 43, 15 November 1918, Page 5
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