Field Ambulance Sketches #246013

Our way lay up the Shinfield Road; and at first we kept to the road, scorning the communication trench, "Shinfield Street," which ran along the left-hand side. But soon after we had surmounted the slight hill beyond Pepper Lane a distant "tut-tut-tut" warned us that "Artful Otto" was at work, and we dropped into the dark trench.<br><br>Artful Otto was a German machine-gunner somewhere on the left who had discovered that if he fired on to the wall of the Merry Maidens public house, the ricochets would go spinning straight down Shinfield Road, and might even enfilade the communication trench itself.