United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To reach the fire-trenches is easy enough; the difficulty is to find your way out of them. The main line of fire-trenches has a kind of loop-line behind it with innumerable junctions and small depôts in the shape of dug-outs, and at first sight the subaltern's plan of the estate was as bewildering as a signalman's map of Clapham Junction.
The C.O. of the East Cheshires, who did not seem to have grasped that Doe and I were friends, had attached me to D Company, which was in reserve on the slopes of Fusilier Bluff, and Doe to B Company, which was holding the fire-trenches. The man was a fool, of course, but what could a subaltern say to a colonel? And Monty, too, had gone to live by himself.
Then, glancing to his left and to his right, he caught glimpses of other sentries like himself, solitary Frenchmen stationed in those battered fire-trenches to watch for the coming of the enemy the thinnest of thin garrisons, indeed, placed there to guard the French lines from sudden attack, and to present as few men as possible to the devouring shells cast by the Germans.
If no one was to be seen in front of the French fire-trenches; or in front of the cunning pits where machine-guns were hidden, there was yet ample movement, and plenty of people, close at hand to drive ennui from the minds of Henri and his comrade.
For instance, the reserve line is not always connected with the firing-lines by a communication-trench. Those persons whose duty it is to pay daily visits to the fire-trenches Battalion Commanders, Gunner and Sapper officers, an occasional Staff Officer, and an occasional most devoted Padre perform the journey as best they may.
The Front is, indeed, to be visualised not as a straight line but as a fully opened fan, the periphery of which is the fire-trenches, the ribs the lines of communication, and the knob or knuckle is General Headquarters. When we extend our Front southwards and take over the French trenches we just expand our fan a little more.
Thus are craters consolidated; each side holds the lip nearest to them, and hurls curses and bombs at his opponents on the other. The distance between the sapheads is perhaps twenty or twenty-five yards, instead of the hundred odd of the parent fire-trenches; and any closer acquaintanceship is barred by the egg-cup crater, which stretches between them. "Keep down, sir well down.
Back behind the fire-trenches cooks were busy over their braziers, while already kettles of steaming soup and coffee and long rolls of bread were being conveyed to the soldiers. It was a happy, a grimy, and a decidedly confident band of men who sat down that early dawn to prepare once more for the enemy.
I yelled, and disappeared. It was quite dark in the fire-trenches by seven o'clock. My men, with every stitch of equipment on their backs, stood on the firing-step and kept up a dilatory fire on the Turkish lines. "Maintain an intermittent fire," I ordered, as I walked among them.
Modern invention, high explosives, and scientific artillery had altered modes of defence, and the fort at Douaumont and the forts elsewhere encircling the sleepy town of Verdun were now but shells of masonry, mere billets for soldiers, while the guns were ranged out in the open. What a busy scene it was behind the fire-trenches in which Henri and Jules were now standing.
Word Of The Day