Trenching

“ The sun blazes hotly, the sweat stings in our eyes, we wipe it off on our sleeves and often blood with it. At last we reach a trench that is in a somewhat better condition. It is manned and ready for the counter-attack, it receives us. Our guns open up in full blast and cut off the enemy attack.
The lines behind us stop. They can advance no farther. The attack is crushed by our artillery. We watch. The fire lifts a hundred yards and we break forward. Beside me a lance-corporal has his head torn off. He runs a few steps more while the blood spouts from his neck like a fountain. ”

“ As these men charge the trenches are filled again. As soon as they are ready the second crowd starts over. Then the third, and the fourth and so on. There is no attempt to take cover, because there is no cover. It is a rush to get there. There is no regular formation. The trench spews forth a swarm of fighting demons and they come trampling and yelling across that terrible strip of earth as fast as they can come.
After our artillery annihilated the attack it began to shell their trenches. ”

“ Tyranny was purely a matter of business with this little moral shrimp about whom I'm going to tell you. I was standing between a communication trench and a crater left by a mine which was being "consolidated," as they have it in these days.... All around me soldiers of the third line swarmed and clambered over the débris, digging, hammering, shifting planks and sandbags from south to north, lugging new timbers, reels of barbed wire, ladders, cases of ammunition, machine guns, trench mortars.
The din of the guns was terrific; overhead our own shells passed with a deafening, clattering roar ”

“ What wire remained uncut was blown to fragments by a torpedo, and when the barrage lifted and came down behind, the raiders jumped into the enemy's trench and set to work. For twenty minutes they bombed and destroyed, cleared dug-outs, pulled down machine guns, barricaded communication trenches, and handed prisoners back to escorts. Then on a signal they as quickly [36] withdrew, and still under cover of artillery fire made their own trench again. Thirteen affrighted Germans, of two different units, accompanied the party; and, finest of all, every man of the party returned. ”

“ 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." ”

“ They came to the second line of trenches, floundered through what seemed an endless series of mysterious zigzag passages, waded through two or three feet of greenish water, scrambled up the embankment beyond, and raced across the open field, as fast as men could race with packs on their backs, full haversacks, and rifle and bayonet, over ground pitted with holes, heaped with earth and stones, scattered with the bodies of men, strands of barbed wire, fragments of shells and all the dreadful apparatus of warfare. ”

“ The main question is—what is, in view of the nature of the attack, the best disposition of lines of trench; and do they require the addition of redoubts?
The most important point, with the object of protection, is that the trenches must not be conspicuous; this is the best defence against artillery. With the object of resistance by their own fire they must have a good view, or, as it is generally described, no dead ground in front of them. ”

“ Some of the most important work done by them in this trench warfare includes the construction, repair, and general maintenance of all trenches (assisted by the infantry) ; the building of all mined dugouts and shelters of all descriptions; the construction of all strong points and emplacements, machine-gun posts, trench-mortar posts, artillery gun-pits, snipers' posts, O.P.'s, or artillery observation-posts, and so on; all demolition work, such as the firing of large charges of high explosives in mines under the enemy's positions, the destruction of enemy strong points, etc. ”

“ A gray wave poured over the parapet of the German first line trench, rolled through the prepared openings in their own barbed-wire entanglements, and advanced, alternately running and creeping, toward the Allied line. But when the Germans were once in the open a terrible thing happened to them. The machine guns from all along the British trenches met them with a rain of bullets that mowed them down as grain falls to the blades of the farmer's reaper. The rifles of the men in khaki, resting on the benches of the parapet, spit constant and deadly fire at them. ”

“ At midnight every road and track leading to the forward trenches had been brimming with men, with regiments tramping slowly or squatting stolidly by the roadside, smoking much and talking little, had been crawling with transport, with ammunition carts, and ambulances and stretcher-parties, and sappers heavily laden with sandbags and rolls of barbed wire. The trenches—support, communication, and firing—had trickled with creeping rivulets of khaki caps and been a-bristle with bobbing rifle-barrels. ”

“ Imagine the infantry, bombers and bayonet men in four successive lines, straining on the leash till the artillery had finished pounding and the smoke-bombs which had been prepared to cover the advance from the sight of the German trenches had been let loose. Thrilling is the moment when warriors climb their trenches to the assault. ”

“ We cannot be surprised that the mounted arm was robbed of much of its utility, that artillery work was often blind for want of observation, that the trench dug in the green heart of a forest escaped the watchful eyes of aeroplanes, that this war became a fight of men and rifles, and, above all, the machine-gun. ”

“ Well, finding the German trench seems to be much the same experience, varied by a multitude of bullets singing past like bees, and with the additional thought ever present to the mind—when will the enemy's barrage burst on you? When it does come, you do not hear it coming—there is too much racket in the air for your ears to catch the shell whistling down as you are accustomed to. ”

“ They knew, as did we, that the roads in the rear of the trenches are filled, at night, with troops, transport wagons, and fatigue parties. They knew, as did we, that men become so utterly weary of living in ditches—living in holes, like rats—that they are willing to take big risks when moving in or out of the trenches, for the pure joy of getting up on top of the ground. Many a night when we were moving up for our week in the first line, or back for our week in reserve, we heard the far-off rattle of German Maxims, and in an instant, the bullets would be zip-zipping all around us. ”

“ These trenches are elaborately constructed and cleverly concealed. In many places there are wire entanglements and lengths of rabbit fencing.
"Both woods and open are carefully aligned, so that they can be swept by rifle fire and machine-guns, which are invisible from our side of the valley. The ground in front of the infantry is also, as a rule, under cross fire from the field artillery placed on neighboring heights, and under high angle fire from pieces placed well back behind the woods on top of the plateau. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For every dug-out is a menagerie,
Where the trenches run down from the Somme to the sea.
The sap that I stand in, it nightly is made
Into hell by a thing they call Rifle Grenade,
And when heavy trench mortars are bursting close by
It is not lust of battle that gleams in my eye.
Don’t think me a coward though, Mary, my dear,
For along the whole front it’s the same thing I fear,
And every young hero is funking like me,
Where the trenches run down from the Somme to the sea. ”

“ It is simply inconceivable that any human beings could persist for two years blasting out trenches inch by inch, building up both sides to a proper height with fragments of rock and myriads of sand bags under the most terrific and plunging crossfire of mitrailleuse, musketry, hand grenades and all kinds of artillery, until at last a trench was constructed varying from ten to twenty meters in distance from the paralleling enemy's work. ”

“ But if trenches were devised to save the soldier, modern artillery and explosives were devised to kill him; and the only thing that makes you wonder [145] about the trenches and their relative value to life, is how a man can go into them and be alive at the end of the war. At Labasse one night I talked to a captain who told me something of these things.
"Yesterday," he said, "the English fired a hundred and fifty shells over our trench. One hundred and forty-eight burst harmlessly. The other two dropped into the trench and killed fifteen men. ”

“ Every Army has its own system of conducting trench warfare, founded largely upon national characteristics. The Germans, it used to be said, hold their trenches with machine guns, the British with men, the French with artillery. ”

“ Many of the leading sections had leaped, regardless of all obstacles, into the trench, with a view of avenging their slaughtered officers; but these, like the axemen, had been carried away by the discharges from the bastion and the incessant fire poured upon them from the loop-holes of the stockade. Despairing of success, without fascines to fill up the ditch, or a ladder to scale the picketing that afforded cover to their enemies, there was no alternative but to remain and be cut down to a man, where they stood, or to retire into the brushwood that lined the ravine. ”

“ As we neared the hostile trenches their entire front lit up with red flame from machine-guns and rifles.
Humming bullets, fierce screams, hoarse attempts at cheers, guttural shouts, the clatter of machine-guns, all blended in one demoniac roar as we piled over into the enemy’s trench. The foe at first resisted, but at last yielded before the impetuous assault of our bayonets and fell back through their communicating trenches. I saw one sticking out his head from behind a traverse as much as to say, “I am at home.” Another big German, swinging his rifle by the barrel for a club, confronted me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Company of the Stonewalls progressed slowly for some distance up the communication trench, with the whistling of bullets growing faster the nearer they approached to the firing line. This trench too had been badly damaged previous to the attack by the British artillery, and the cover it afforded to the crawling line of men was frequently scanty, and at times was almost nil. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ah! the welcome starlike rocket! The French guns lengthened their shots, shelled the upper line of trenches.... A loud shout and a mad rush.... The “Blue Devils” were in action.
Ta, ta, ta, ta.... The German machine-guns. Sh! Cirr! Shrapnel burst with a quick flame and little yellow clouds.... Dead men fell.
But the remainder kept on running and bouncing until they reached the German works. The “75s” shells had made a mess of the entanglements, and the main trench was a ruin, spotted with corpses.... Bullets whistled, grenades exploded, injured men shrieked. ”

“ Between us and the enemy is a burnt-out house, which rings with the smack of the enemy's bullets as they hurtle against the wall or against the tiles. Opposite that, again, are our trenches, 400 yards away, and practically 400 yards from us also is the enemy's trench, as the line takes a bend there. I lie at nights ready armed, for one never knows what a minute may bring forth! I have told my people not to fire on Christmas Day if the enemy does not do so, but to trust him—not at all! So here I am spending Christmas Eve in the trenches—like my father did exactly 60 years ago in the Crimea. ”