It is raining and the weather is bad so Jerry didn’t come over last night. He shelled us most of the night but none came too close. As the weather cleared up this morning over he came, one kid got shot through the leg and I had just moved around the building when a bullet just hit the side of the building. Shrapnel went into my jacket. He was back over at noon again and bombed the docks in town. He has started shelling again and some of them are coming close. The company is all out working laying a mine field as Germany is counter attacking. I still don’t feel very well. This cold really has me stopped. He came back twice this afternoon. Once we went down to see where a Spitfire had crashed and on the way back the 36th Engineers were blowing a building. Here we were waiting for the blast and couldn’t go forward to get to any shelter and Jerry was dropping his bombs. Boy were we sweating. Boy oh boy did Jerry ever get mixed up on his signals. Instead of coming over just after it got dark he came just at dusk. We could see him plain and could follow our tracers perfect. I emptied one whole belt full into one plane, so I at least helped bring one plane down. They were Medium bombers and there was about twenty of them. They didn’t even have time to drop their bombs. I only saw one plane escape. Planes were burning all over. They made up for it though because they came back in about an hour. Let me tell you I was scared. They rained bombs all around us. Flames were lit all around. Joe Watters and I were together and were both shaking like a leaf. Flack was bursting all over the barracks. I gave Joe my Rosary as I thought we were all a goner. Know one will ever know how we all felt. We were all just like trapped rats. Soon the raid let up a little and Joe and I took off for a dugout. Just as we got near it here came a bomb, whistling down. We hit the tunnel on the fly and both of us just shook. There were also some other fellows in there and they were just as scared as we were. So we came back and went to bed.
Your Son, ‘Chick’
