Trenches

“ They are the German trenches, dug in the solid chalk at the beginning of the offensive. It is as if someone had made chalk drawings on those slopes to amuse the aeroplanes. In front, following their lines, are walls of sand-bags, so high and so deep that they appear to be a citadel: the English trenches. It is a stiff climb. We hop from puddle to puddle like sparrows. Everywhere the earth is in heaps. Holes filled with water—shell-holes, you understand—have turned the whole place into a chessboard of sunken squares. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The face feels it the most, however. The cheeks become cold as ice. Far below, the snakelike windings of trenches—-trenches of friend and foe—-can be followed from high altitudes. Some parts of the line seem mile-deep systems of trenches, section on section, transverse here, approach line there, support line behind, ever joining one with another in wondrous fashion. Shell-torn areas between the trench lines, the yellow earth showing its wounds plainly from well above, caught the eyes of the fliers. ”

“ The white excavations that here and there marked the presence of a trench were like a child's scribbling on a slate, if the occasional glow of a brazier had not told Dennis that those trenches were full of men, all waiting to repulse the great Allied push. ”

“ Here is the trench, a narrow ditch between two vertical walls of earth. A few scattered men are fast asleep at the bottom of it. The night will see it peopled from end to end. And away beyond the edge of the wood there are more and still more trenches like this, one and all filled with soldiers. ”

“ You run across these trenches in the moonlight as you journey about the country and for the moment you wonder for what purpose somebody dug those long ditches by the shore, and what the trench or irrigation scheme is. ”

“ We have almost fallen into the trenches, which open unexpectedly at our feet. The heads of men appear above the soil; then the men hoist themselves out of the deep cutting, with the aid of their rifles, and the relief is effected, very swiftly and without noise, in broad daylight.
These trenches are splendid, deeply sunk in the chalk, with low parapets supported by wattles. Above them, a roof of leaves droops almost down to the parapet, leaving only a narrow opening through which we can survey the terrain, without being seen. ”

“ Here, some one told me, corn once grew, but now it is sodden chalk, pasted and mixed as if by some giant mixing machine with the shattered weapons of war.
Broken trenches—the German front line—in places remain and extend a few yards, only to disappear into the rubble where the tide swept over them.
As we climb, the earth beneath my foot suddenly gives way, letting me down with a jerk to the hip, and opening up a hole through which I peer and see a dead Boche coiled up, his face—or so I suspect it was—resting upon his arm to protect it from some oncoming horror. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Over hundreds of yards between the opposing trenches surges a sea of vast funnels. One stands amazed before them as before those abysses which open at one's feet among the Alps. Here the destructive genius of man has nothing to learn from the dreadful wrath of Nature. ”

“ We are always speaking of the trenches, while not all parts of the line are held by trenches. A trench is dug in the ground; a breastwork is raised from the level of the ground. At some points a trench becomes practically a breastwork, as its wall is raised to get free of the mud and water.
We came into the open and heard the sound of voices and saw a spotty white wall; for some of the sandbags of the new British breastworks still retained their original colour. ”

“ To scour the Trenches, is to make a vigorous sally upon the guard of the trenches, force them to give way, and quit their ground, drive away the workmen, break down the parapet, fill up the trench, and spike their cannon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A complete detailed plan of our own trenches and as much as is known of those of the enemy opposite should be made, and be available for study and to refer to in making reports. Every bay of the trench should be numbered, every traverse lettered. All junction points of fire and communicating trenches, all dugouts, all posts, mortar positions, machine-gun positions, observation posts, and any points that it may be necessary to refer to in reports should be designated by numbers. ”

“ These trenches, you know, are much deeper than one's height; you don't see anything. It's like walking along a mud-walled passage. You just trudge along them in single file. Every now and then some one stumbles into a soakaway for rainwater or swears at a soft place, or somebody blunders into the man in front of him. This seems to go on for hours and hours. It certainly went on for an hour; so I suppose we did two or three miles of it. At one place we crossed a dip in the ground and a ditch, and the trench was built up with sandbags up to the ditch and there was a plank. ”

“ All communication trenches are tortuous and practically endless. On an offensive front they have vertical sides of unsupported earth and occasional soakaways for rain, covered by wooden gratings, and they go on and on and on. ”

“ Shorn of all technicalities, the plain method of warfare which has developed as the result of the trench building is that each force establishes lines along miles of front with trenches in rows, one after the other, at measured intervals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Trench life forms such an immense feature of the war that it will be interesting, I dare say, to give a little detailed account of it, just to show how closely resembling animal and savage conditions are those which have to be endured, and which, as a rule, are borne cheerfully and in a thorough make-the-best-of-it spirit.
We had been ordered to go to the trenches, this time on a new front. The line was situated on a canal bank, and we took up our position at night, carefully picking our way, helped by the lights of the flares. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It must be remembered that in many places in France there are stretches of line where it is impossible to dig a trench at all in winter, because you meet water as soon as you scratch the surface; and therefore both our line and the German are a breastwork built up instead of a trench dug down. The curious thing is that in the trenches themselves you scarcely realise the difference. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Keeping one eye on the top of the trench, prepared to duck, lest it suddenly became uniform in height and expose your head to the open field, gazing the rest of the time at the bottom of the pit, lest you slip in a hole and go sprawling in the yellow liquid ooze, we followed the officers, slavishly imitating their movements of progress. Then we came to another trench that made a right angle with our own, advancing towards the firing line, parallel to the road we had left as unsafe, exactly as in the approach trenches at Labasse. ”

“ In the western area of the theater of war, in France and Flanders, where whole armies were deadlocked, facing each other for weeks without shifting their position an inch, such trenches become an elaborate affair, with extensive underground working and wing connections of lines which almost constitute little fortresses and afford a certain measure of comfort. ”

“ I had a working party in two shifts working all night and all three nights, digging communication trenches. I used to go to bed about 4.20 a.m. and sleep till lunch-time, and perhaps lie down again for a bit in the afternoon. That is why my letters have not been so frequent.
"It is extraordinary that what is wanted at the moment is not so much a soldier as a civil engineer. There are trenches to be laid out and dug, and the drainage of them to be thought out and carried through. Often the sides have to be 'riveted' or staked, and a flooring of boards put in, supported on small piles. ”

“ In the forward trench system many miles of trenches had to be dug—assault trenches, assembly trenches, communication trenches, trenches for telephone wires—dugouts had to be constructed for sheltering troops, for dressing-stations, for storing food, water, and engineering material, not forgetting ammunition. ”

“ Underground activity, either offensive or defensive, is first observed from those points in our lines nearest to it. All enemy trenches facing a salient of our lines will be the object of particular attention and closest daily observation. This observation of the first-line trenches should disclose the presence of enemy underground works and their approximate location. ”

“ We continue our way along trenches which, instead of running more or less in regular lines, zigzag in and out in sharp turns and corners, which face the high hills on our left, each corner protected by strong sand-bagged breastworks. ”

“ Men wanted everything that was hard to find; and it seemed, too, that every man was either just out of the trenches—which began right there and extended in communicating trenches, the reserve and the most advanced trenches, nearly a mile on in front of us—or just going in, and therefore in a great rush. ”

“ Trenches should be laid out in company lengths, if possible, and adjoining trenches should afford each other mutual support. The flanks and important gaps in the line should be protected by fire trenches echeloned in rear. ”

“ These parallels are narrow trenches like the defensive lines, but with a series of steps in the front side so that the men can go over the top easily. If there are no steps, trench ladders or footholds must be used. ”

“ A striking feature of our line—to use the conventional term which so seldom expresses accurately the position taken up by an army—is that it consists really of a series of trenches not all placed alongside each other, but some more advanced than others, and many facing in different directions. At one place they run east and west, along one side of a valley; another, almost north and south, up some subsidiary valley ”

“ We took over these trenches a few days ago; and as the Germans are barely two hundred yards away, this chapter seems to justify its title.... We find that we are committed to an indefinite period of trench life, like every one else. ”

“ Because of the elaborate system of trenches, and the distance from the front line to that part of the country where it was safe to operate in the open, it was necessary to build railways which would travel through tunnels and communicating trenches to the front lines. ”

“ Commodious and well built, fitted throughout with the latest pattern duck-boards and reached by three charmingly sequestered communication trenches, named Hic, Haec and Hoc. The dug-outs are well equipped and well sunk. ”

“ The enemy strongly occupies a line of trenches immediately South of the Chateaugay Branch Railroad, the center of their line being about opposite the center sector of our first line of trench, Sand Road-Target Range Fence, their line of trenches being within 50 yards of the railroad at that point, and then retiring slightly from the railroad to the East and West. ”

“ In the fine intervals we train squelchily and yearn for the trenches. What matters the mire when one is at the front, but to slide gracefully into a pool of turgid water, in heavy marching order, for practice only, is hardly good enough. ”

“ It is evident, I repeat, that in practice there are needed to hold trenches a great many more men than this. You must allow for your wastage, for the difference in ability and coolness of different men, for the relieving of the men at regular and fairly short intervals, and in general, it will be found that a line of trenches is not successfully held with less than 3000 men to a mile. ”