Sandbag

“ The easiest thing to do with a sandbag in a trench, if you don't want it, is to chuck it out. Human nature being what it is, the distance chucked is reduced to a minimum—in other words, it is placed on the edge of the parapet. More follow—and they are placed beside it on the edge of the parapet; which causes the inside edge of the parapet to increase in height, but not in thickness. In other words, after a while the top two or three layers of bags, though looking perfectly safe from the inside, are not bullet proof. ”

“ No doubt it looks neater. But it makes our loopholes plain. For a time black sandbags were refused. The Germans sniped at us, but not very much. Only one of our lot was hit, by a chance shot that came through the sandbag at the top of the parapet. He just had a cut in the neck which didn't prevent his walking back. They shelled the trenches half a mile to the left of us though, and it looked pretty hot. The sandbags flew about. But the men lie low, and it looks worse than it is. The weather was fine and pleasant, as General French always says. ”

“ In connection with the employment of physical force on board ship I and others were quite recently greatly amused by the experiences of a captain of one of the Irrawaddy flotilla steamers, recounted as follows: “The best peacemaker you can have is a sandbag about a foot long and an inch thick; I and my mate and engineer have one, and we never find it beyond us to clear the deck of a crowd.” I should think it would be better than a belaying-pin, which is at times an awkward thing to carry in your sea boot. ”

“ A steady stream of sandbags filled with the result of their labours came up the shaft down which the pipe from the bellows stretched into the darkness—sandbags which must be taken somewhere and emptied, or used to revet a bit of trench which needed repair. ”

“ And Claud, despite the whizzing bullets, filled more sandbags and shoved them up with a shovel. Bill helped him to make a V-shaped aperture. This work was continued all along the line. But all the sandbags and crack shots could not keep the rifle fire down. To move a hand or head above the level of the ground meant a wound. ”

“ All women are busy sewing up sandbags to strengthen our defence, while bullets are raining into the compound like hailstones. A man comes rushing to where we are working, and tells whoever is in charge of filling the sandbags that a hundred, or as many as possible, must be taken to such and such a barricade, or it cannot hold out. ”

“ It is impossible in a narrow trench to move from a standing position when throwing. The men in throwing practices should therefore be made to maintain a standing position.
Sandbags. It is necessary that all men engaged in trench fighting should be specially taught in the uses of sandbags and the methods of filling, tying and [27] passing them in the trench. The method of passing sandbags in a trench is as follows: The men place themselves from two to three paces apart with their backs in the direction to which they are passing the sandbags and pass them between their legs from one to another. ”

“ It is questionable if any army in the field ever had too many sandbags. To keep earth walls standing at as steep a slope as possible is the object of all builders of trenches, for the steeper a wall the safer it is. ”

“ Two nights out of each four we were at rest, we had to send large parties to Richebourg to carry on this work, which was being done "by the piece." A certain number of sandbags were issued to each man about half-a-mile before he got to his (p. 104) work, and he was told that when these had been filled and laid he could return. It is perhaps needless to say that many of the sandbags found a resting place in the nearest ditch, not far from the Royal Engineers' dump, where they were issued, and that the building of the breastwork did not proceed very rapidly. ”

“ Hide-bags now seemed to outvie with the canvas ones, and sheets of tough bull’s skin were picketed to the cheeks of the embrasures to save the gabions and fascines from taking fire. Nevertheless, the sand-bag—the ancient ally of the brushwood gabion—stood its ground, and to economize its expenditure, beef and powder barrels, casks, and tubs were used in the shady parts of the works. Fragile things, too, were the sand-bags, for they frequently burst by concussion or the influence of the weather, and, moreover, required nice adjustment to make them lie effectively. ”

“ Disdaining retreat, and maddened with rage, the furious animal charged from the depths of the river, and, gaining a footing, he reared his bulky form from the surface, came boldly upon the sandbank, and attacked the hunters open-mouthed. He little knew his enemy; they were not the men to fear a pair of gaping jaws, armed with a deadly array of tusks, but half a dozen lances were hurled at him, some entering his mouth from a distance of five or six paces, at the same time several men threw handfuls of sand into his enormous eyes. ”

“ For the first two or three miles our way lay along the hard, white beach, whose sands were covered everywhere by millions of tiny, blue-backed, red-legged soldier crabs, moving to and fro in companies, regiments, and divisions, hastening to burrow before the daylight revealed their presence to their dreaded enemies—the golden-winged sand plovers and the greedy sooty terns, who yet knew how to find them by the myriad small nodules of sand they left to betray their hiding-place. ”

“ When the month was past and Singin' Sandy's day rolled round again for the ninth time, it was spring time, and the river was bankfull from the spring rise and yellow as paint with mud and full of drift and brush. Out from shore a piece, in the current, floating snags were going down, thick as harrow teeth, all pointing the same way like big black fish going to spawn. Early that morning, the river had bitten out a chunk of crumbly clay bank and took a cabin in along with it, and there was a hard job saving a couple of women and a whole shoal of young ones. ”

“ The amount of sand that gets into the lock of one’s rifle. The continual discomfort of sand blowing into one’s eyes. The cold that strikes up through the stone, or the sand, on which one sits. The personality of my neighbor of Squad Nine, who seemed much less interested in his life as a banker than I was. The incalculable value of the pack as a life-saver, for having to lean against the wall of the narrow trench, nothing but the roll on my back kept me from the deadly chill of pneumonia. ”

“ Dawn was just breaking oozy and grey at the swell of the prairie over the Jumping Sandhills. They lay quiet and shining in the green-brown plain; but I knew that there was a churn beneath which could set those swells of sand in motion, and make glory-to-God of an army. Who can tell what it is? A flood under the surface, a tidal river—what? No man knows. But they are sea monsters on the land. Every morning at sunrise they begin to eddy and roll—and who ever saw a stranger sight? Bien, I looked back. There were those four pirates coming on, about three miles away. ”

“ All we could do was to construct sand-bag parapets or barricades, while our so-called "dug-outs" consisted of huts constructed of sand-bags, roofed with corrugated iron and covered with more sand-bags. They afforded protection from shrapnel and small shell fragments, but, of course, not against direct hits from any kind of shells. Even a little "whizz-bang" would go through them as though they were egg-shells. All the earth thereabouts was of the consistency of thick soup and our parapet had a habit of sloughing away just about as fast as we could build it up. ”

“ The lucky owner of this charm, when escape from the enemy is otherwise impossible, will take a handful of sand and throw it towards his pursuers, and a sandbank will immediately form and stop their progress until the owner of the jelo charm is far beyond their reach. The innumerable and ever-changing sandbanks in the river favour this belief. ”

“ These sandhills were made of such fine sand that it was continuously blowing and drifting; any rifle pits dug out, say, a couple of feet, in the evening, would be completely obliterated in the morning.
Sending out supplies, as soon as it was light, to this distant company, was a most difficult job. To begin with, we found that camels, loaded with water fanatis, could not negotiate the steep faces of sand, so we had to do our best with the Lewis gun mules, carrying the fanatis only half full. ”

“ A sudden movement on the hillside caught his attention.
There was a swift rush of a black form silhouetted against the whiteness as one of the robbers, adopting new tactics, sought a vantage-point higher on the mountain, from which he might shoot down to the road. Quick as a flash and with deadly certainty, Sandy’s rifle recognized the danger, gave answer, and another huddled heap was added to the morning’s tragedy. ”

“ No one can form any idea of the intense discomfort of a sand-storm, unless he has been in one. I may close up my tent and be roasted inside. I may lock up my portmanteau, which fits pretty closely, and have it in my tent, the lock covered with leather, yet when I go to bed I find the sheets brown with sand, the most secret recesses of my portmanteau and the lock filled with sand, and my writing-case also, which is inside. I open my mouth to speak, and I can masticate sand, if so disposed. I eat—all my food is full of sand. I drink, not water, but water and sand. In fact, sand is everywhere ”

“ The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on.
The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat.
The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under.
The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot of wind come and gone.
This is the song I rested with: Head, heels, and fingers rocked to the nigger mammy humming of it, to the mile-off steamboat landing whistle of it.
The murmurs run with bees' wings in a late summer sun. They go and come with white surf
slamming on a beach all day. ”

“ He had sat there idly gazing to sea for about five minutes when he noticed a queer object bobbing about in the water about twenty feet from shore. It was dark and round, attracting Sandy’s curiosity immediately. After considerable maneuvering he managed to fish it out with the muzzle of his rifle.
What Sandy picked up in his hands was a large canteen or thermos bottle, used on expeditions in the polar regions. It was covered with sodden leather and evidently had been afloat for a long period of time. ”

“ It is as though some great monster of fabled size and unearthly power were puffing out these hurtling blasts of sand upon the traveler’s head. The sound is that of a giant hand drawing rough fingers in regular rhythm across tightly stretched silk.
When the sand-storm comes there is nothing to do but to push doggedly on. Around any stationary object, whether it might be a post, a camel, or a man, the eager sands swiftly gather, piling up and up until there remains only a smoothly rounded heap. If it is torture to go on, it is death itself to halt. ”

“ SANDWICH Approaching Sandwich, whose towers and roof-tops rise picturesquely ahead from the level marshes, mingled with the masts and spars of a few vessels lying at the town quays, a belt of spindly trees is passed, stretching away to the left. They are trees of a considerable height and size, but they wear an ill-nourished appearance, as they cannot fail to do when we consider how poor the soil on which they grow. It is, in fact, nothing but sand and pebbles. One solitary residence, Stonar House, stands amid these weird woods. ”

“ Tufts of strong straw are set in the sand in regular rows, like plants in a garden, the whole breadth and length of the embankment. The tops of the tufts rise upwards of a foot above the surface of the sand, and the sand that is washed up by the tide or blown by the wind, lodges about their roots, and as the tufts are regularly renewed, they not only preserve this bank of light sand from diminishing, but also increase its size and solidity. The left of the enemy's army was posted at the commencement of the sand-hills. ”

“ Sometimes we would find a loch with a boat on it, and drift up and down, casting along the shores. Sometimes, in spite of Sandy’s confident predictions, no boat could be found, and then I must put on the Mackintosh trousers and wade out over my hips into the water, and circumambulate the pond, throwing the flies as far as possible toward the middle, and feeling my way carefully along the bottom with the long net-handle, while Sandy danced on the bank in an agony of apprehension lest his Predestinated Opportunity should step into a deep hole and be drowned. ”

“ One of the peculiarities of those terrible and fatal sands is, that the first approach of those entering tides, which come on, not with the ordinary roll and thunder of billows and flash of snowy surf, but swift and silent as the pestilence that flies by night, is harbingered by no outward and visible sight or sound, but by the gradual and at first imperceptible conversion of the solid sands into miry and ponderous sludge, into moving quicksand, into actual water.
When the sounds and sights are heard and seen, it is too late to make an effort. Death is at hand, inevitable. ”

“ We advised a visit to Sandy. Sandy was the hot bath merchant. He lurked in a dark barn at the end of the village, and could be found there at anytime of any day, brooding over the black cauldrons in which the baths were brewed, his Tam-o'-shanter drooped over one eye, steam condensing on his blue nose. Theoretically the hot baths were free, but in practice a franc pressed into Sandy's forepaw was found to have a strong calorific effect on the water.
So down the village on all fours, groaning like a Dutch brig in a cross-sea, went our Albert Edward. ”

“ I had already grown old enough to perceive that the nurse's tale about the Sandman and the nest of children in the half-moon could not be quite true, but, nevertheless, this Sandman remained a fearful spectre, and I was seized with the utmost horror, when I heard him not only come up the stairs, but violently force open my father's room-door and enter. Sometimes he staid away for a long period, but oftener his visits were in close succession. This lasted for years, and I could not accustom myself to the terrible goblin; the image of the dreadful Sandman did not become more faint. ”