This is Jockel Podcast number 164 with Echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening,

echo. Good evening. I crept ahead a few feet and raised carefully to look over the bank.

Crock! A rifle was thrust up and fired only inches from Hale's head. The bullets split

his scalp and the concussion broke his eardrums. Blood streamed over his face, blinding

him and I helped get him back to Stuart. Then I pitched a second bomb close in. Meanwhile,

Mac and Tire had not halted. He had rushed on and Sambrow and I half raised as we hurried

after him. A machine gun blazed at us from a spot on the right and we dove into the mud,

crash, slam. The stokes gone was at work but its shells dropped short, falling almost

in our path. We rose again as the maxim stopped firing. Then a flaming white hot instant,

oblivion. When I recovered consciousness, my head was splitting with pain and a terrible

nausea had seized my stomach. The stoke shell had dropped beside me, throwing me bodily

into the mud and Sambrow was stunned as well. He was lying in the slime and feeling his

limbs certain that he was wounded. All around us was a frightful clamor of guns and bombs

and rifle shots. I heard Mac and Tire's voice shouting five rounds rapid, then it stopped,

but my nose was bleeding and I was too dizzy to stand. We crawled towards the sound,

then halted. There was a great plunging in the murk and two dim figures came toward us

puffing and blowing tugging at something. They were Germans, big men and a machine gun

and tripod. They placed it just in front of us and one man yanked it along cartridge belt.

I pulled the pin from my last bomb and heaved the missile at a count of two. It burst

just beneath the tripod. One man went down like a huge tree, the other struggled a moment

before he stilled. We went by them, making sure the gun was ruined and

a new-made crater found in man of A company with his wrist almost severed. We bandaged him

...