Trencher

“ British, French, and Belgian troops are greeted with cheers by the people as they march from spells of duty in the trenches to the villages in the rear. These men are jaded and worn. They stay in the trenches for days at a time and are constantly under artillery fire as well as being subjected to infantry attacks.
As one group goes back to rest, another moves forward to take its place, and the men going into action cheer those who are retiring. ”

“ I had a trench map of the sector, but it seemed to me one never could possibly identify the different ways, all mud being alike, and no trench offering anything but mud to remember it by. In the front or fire-trench itself, the firing line, one can hop up on the fire-step, look round quickly between bullets, and get a bearing. But in all these interminable communication and branch trenches where one goes to [Pg 31] and fro, at a depth varying from six to ten or twelve feet, seeing only clay and sky, how the dickens could one find the way? ”

“ The front line trench is nothing but a series of traverses, thus to avoid the enfilade effect of shell and machine-gun fire. A straight trench is a death-trap. But to carry hundreds of pole-slung cylinders, already weighing as lead, round traverses on a dark night, is a feat requiring superhuman endurance. ”

“ A walk round the trenches of a single company, which will take you a good half-hour, leaves you with a confused mass of impressions: of rather grimy figures, looking very business-like with their bandoliers strapped crosswise over their overcoats, their rifles by their sides, standing at the parapet; of men in all stages of undress, cooking, eating, washing, writing, in the narrow trench; of faces seen white against the dark background of a dug-out, strained to a telephone which wails fretfully with a puny whine like the toot of a child’s trumpet ”

“ He moves a few yards along the trench, and brings his eye to the ground-level. No good: a bush intervenes, fifteen yards away. He moves further and tries again.
Suddenly, for a brief moment, against the dimly illuminated scrap of horizon, he descries a human form, clad in a kilt, advancing stealthily....
"Number one Platoon—at the enemy in front—rapid fire!"
He is just in time. There comes an overwrought roar of musketry all down the line of trenches. Simultaneously, a solid wall of men rises out of the earth not fifty yards away, and makes for the trenches with a long-drawn battle yell. ”

“ Beyond the parapet is broken ground, utterly uninteresting, utterly prosaic, for all that it is the realm of death. Immediately in front of the trench is barbed wire, new and taut and cleanly grey, fastened in a perplexing criss-cross work to lines of stout wooden posts driven deep in the ground; beyond that a stretch of flat field, of corn or grass or stubble, with a ditch here and a tree there, and maybe a pile of blackened bricks that once was a farm. ”

“ My job is to teach you fellers all about what has turned out to be of the highest importance in this trench warfare, namely, bombs and grenades. This is a trench war; has been for three years. The nature of the fighting may alter, of course. We all hope it will. But we must think of trenches at the moment. Now, the German is a clever feller, and he soon saw that you'd never kill off the enemy if you just sat down behind a parapet with a rifle in your hand. ”

“ I could only wonder at the magnificent fighting qualities of soldiers who had held their own so effectively against armies equipped and armed and munitioned as the Germans were.
After he had finished drugging his trench pets, Shorty and I made a tour of the trenches. I was much surprised at seeing how clean and comfortable they can be kept in pleasant summer weather. Men were busily at work sweeping up the walks, collecting the rubbish, which was put into sandbags hung on pegs at intervals along the fire trench. At night the refuse was taken back of the trenches and buried. ”

“ Then, farther on, just where the landscape becomes magnificent in freedom, expanse, and light, the winding furrow, called the communication trench, begins. Concealed thus, we arrive in the trench, and it is truly a spectacle of war, severe and not without grandeur—this long passage which has a grey sky for ceiling, and in which the floor is covered over with recent snow. Here the last infantry units are stationed—units, generally, of feeble effective. The enemy is not more than a hundred metres away. ”

“ The trench from previous occupation is well known to the enemy, and as the pioneers shovel out the mud and the dirt to the left and right a new illumination is provided by the sudden glare and suffocating fumes of the heavies bursting right or left or in the trench itself. But night at least gives the appearance, if not the reality, of safety. As the infantry go forward the work must often be done in the broad daylight, the trench driven through to the new line, or a new resistance built to face the counter-attack. ”

“ Plate 13.—A listening and observation post.
[Pg 22]
The post may be connected with the first line fire trench by a narrow zigzag trench or by an underground passage. If the former, it must be thoroughly concealed and have no excavated earth visible. If it can be located along a hedge or some other natural feature its location may remain unknown to the enemy for a considerable length of time. Where a communication gallery is constructed the roof and walls must be suitably shored up by casing and supports. ”

“ The trenches to-day are monuments of masterly skill and construction. Gazing over a line of such earth fortifications—for that is what they are—from the summit of a hill, it is very difficult to realize that at one's feet there are thousands of men lying hidden from each other, but ready at a moment's notice to spring into deadly activity. An occasional shell bursts here and there, but beyond that the characteristics are apparently peaceful; such is the appearance at the present stage of warfare. ”

“ The trenches are deep and well-made, the parapets solidly constructed. For four days or six, or as many as the regiment remains 'in,' the range of the men's vision will be the walls of the trench, the piled sandbags, the inside of their dug-outs, and a view (taken in peeps through a loophole or reflected in a periscope mirror) of about fifty to a hundred yards of 'neutral ground' and the German parapet beyond. The neutral ground is covered with a jungle of coarse grass, edged on both sides with a tangle of barbed wire. ”

“ Pork and flour barrels, which are usually in abundance in a camp, are frequently filled with sand and used for forming magazines, blindages, &c., in field-works.
A trench constructed in ordinary soil beyond the range of the enemy's grape, is called a simple sap, or ordinary trench. The earth is thrown up on the side towards the place besieged, so as to form a kind of parapet to cover the men in the trench. The labor is here executed under the supervision of engineer soldiers, by working parties detached from the other arms. ”

“ And the main line is complicated by frequent traverses—something after the pattern of a Greek fret, whereas such French trenches as I have seen appeared to prefer the Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey of these things makes it easy to understand the important part played by the bomb and the hand-grenade in trench warfare, for when you have "taken" part of a trench you never know whether you are an occupier or merely a lodger until you have fully explored what is behind the traverses to the right and left of you. ”

“ Many were hit before they had passed through the gaps in our barbed wire. Those who were able crept back and were helped into the trench by comrades. One man was killed as he was about to reach a place of safety. He lay on the parapet with his head and arms hanging down inside the trench. His face was that of a boy of twenty-one or twenty-two. I carry the memory of it with me to-day as vividly as when I left the trenches in November. ”

“ Machine-gun emplacement may be suspected at some particular point.
3. Anything ascertained by patrols about ground between firing lines, thus avoiding unnecessary reconnaissance.
4. Any standing arrangements for patrols at night, including point at which wire can best be passed, ground to be patrolled, or place where they can lie under cover.
5. Any parts of trench from which it is not safe [Pg 119] to fire. Such positions are apt to occur in winding trenches, and are not always recognizable in the dark. ”

“ It is some months since I was in the British trenches, [28] and I often wonder how our men have [Pg 273] accommodated themselves to the ever-increasing multiplication of the apparatus of war. The fire trenches I visited were about wide enough to allow two men to pass one another—and that was all. ”

“ Dropping into the best of quiet front trenches straight from his home life the ordinary man would consider himself as undergoing hardships undreamt of. Visiting those trenches straight from the Somme the other day, with their duck-boards and sandbags, and the occasional ping of a sniper's bullet, and the momentary spasm of field guns and trench mortars which appeared in the official summary next day as "artillery and trench mortar activity"—after the Somme, I say, one found oneself looking on it, in the terms of the friend who went with me, as "war de luxe." ”

“ We simply slogged on week after week at real trench work, making fire-bays and fire-steps, thickening the barbed wire in front, improving dug-outs, and making good the communication trenches and reserve line, by revetting and trench gridding. ”

“ And one morning at dawn you climb over your ditch and run forward until you are cut down. And when you have, so to speak, been thrown in the stream for the others to cross over, and the trench is taken, and you are put out of the way under a few inches of French earth, then, perhaps, inasmuch as experience shows that it isn't worth while to try to keep a trench unless you have captured more than three hundred yards of it, the battalion retires and starts all over again. ”

“ After gaining as much ground as they can, the attacking troops wait for nightfall and entrench; perhaps making a further advance and entrenchment before dawn. In the last stage the attack might even be reduced to gaining ground by sapping. In open and featureless ground, where the rifle and gun have full play, the trench is to the modern soldier very much what the breast-plate was to the man-at-arms, an absolute essential. ”

“ One creeps and crawls at dusk along paths which months of experience has told the soldiers are the best means of approach; and one eventually scrambles into a communication trench which, in a number of zig-zags, leads you to the firing trench, where the men are waiting, rifle in hand, in case of attack, or now and again taking a snap-shot through a loophole in the trench parapet. ”

“ The German trenches were all ready for the enemy to step into them, but every British and French trench had to be dug out and prepared at short notice. This, however, was soon done, and then there began that strange “life in the trenches,” of which so many vivid accounts were written home by officers and privates.
You will certainly want to know what a trench is like. A one-man trench is best described by its other name, “dug-out.” It is a large, neat hole, cut so deeply in the ground that a man can stand upright in it without being seen. ”

“ A machine gun—there is one going now—sounds like a very noisy motor bike, exactly like one, shells and bullets both whistle as well as they are going on. Well, I must get on, I brought my men in in the afternoon. After you get to the deserted village, you start up the communication trench, twisting and turning for about 1,000 yards, you pass the second line, and so on up to the firing line. The trenches we are in are rather wet, but quite pleasant. ”

“ Thousands of men are almost within hailing distance, but none are to be seen. Friend and foe alike are hidden in the trenches.
Some of the most famous trenches are in a wood that is known to all the army as "Plug Street," although, as I have already made clear, it is spelled a little differently on the maps. To reach the trenches you have, of course, to come within rifle-shot of the enemy, for in most places the German and British trenches are not more than 250 yards from each other, and here and there they are only 40 or 50 yards apart. ”

“ In those days one could not dream of going up to or into a trench except in the dark, or, indeed, of moving about anywhere near there except at night. Nowadays one can visit all one's trenches in broad daylight, and never care a rap for the occasional bullets which whistle over the comfortable deep communication trenches ”

“ A move by the enemy calls for a counter-move on our part. A new trench dug by him may be found to enfilade our trenches from a certain angle, and while by the construction of new traverses or the heightening of parapet and parados, the trench may be rendered immune from sniping, a fresh trench will be dug at a new angle, or a machine-gun brought up to make life sour for the occupants of the new German position, and force them in their turn to counter-measures. ”

“ Our course of instruction at the Parapet-etic School was brought to a close late in the evening when we shouldered our packs, bade good-bye to our friends the Gloucesters, and marched back in the moonlight to our billets. I had gained an entirely new conception of trench life, of the difficulties involved in trench building, and the immense amount of material and labor needed for the work.
Americans who are interested in learning of these things at first hand will do well to make the grand tour of the trenches when the war is finished. ”