Under Fire at Neuve Chapelle

The son of Christian parents in Exeter, a Christian himself, and to whom we send a large parcel each month, had a most wonderful mark of God’s preserving care shown him in the battle of Neuve Chapelle. He writes home and says, “No doubt you have read in the papers about our fight, at Neuve Chapelle, and have been worrying about it. Well, mother, first of all I must say that it is all Cud’s preserving care that I am still living... I have been stretcher-bearer and dispatch-rider since a week today, and have had a hard time. Six of us were stationed at a farm five hundred yards from the English trenches, and had been under terrible shell fire the whole time. All our six returned safe, but four of the other fellows were killed and six wounded in the same house, fellows with whom we had been working. The first shell pitched when we were lying on the straw, and altogether hundreds pitched around the house.
“I have been in the trenches each night, and have had many terrible experiences, but after all I am safe and sound, and uninjured, save for a slight graze on the knee where a piece of shrapnel just caught me there. The trenches were only fifty yards from the Germans.... We were lying down for a couple of hours’ rest in the farm, and were just thinking of getting up when a shell pitched in the house, killing one and injuring another in the next room to ours. The second shell pitched in our room, taking off a part of the roof and tearing down a piece of the wall. A piece of shrapnel cut through the haversack which was under my head and which I was using as a pillow; another piece smashed my water-bottle which was inside my haversack, and bullets passed through my razor strop and my flannel and nail brush, and I was not touched. I hope you are not worrying about me, because remember I am in God’s hands and He has guarded me through all the awful shell fire so far, and He will do so in the future, if ever I have to be in such a position again.”