United States or Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Trapdoors in the decks opened, and the crews poured out and began to pile sandbags in front of the machines so that when day broke fully and the mists lifted, the enemy could not see what had been brought up in the night. Day dawned, and a frisky little breeze from the west scattered the fog and swept the sky clean. There wasn't a cloud by eight o'clock.
The position was known to us as "Suicide Signal Box," because it was so dangerous as to be almost suicidal to cross the line, as was necessary to reach the road only five yards beyond. The ruined building is the signal box itself, protected by the line of sandbags in front of telegraph poles and shelled trees.
To pick one's way in the dark over strange ground littered with débris is not an easy task. The exact language I heard would hardly bear repeating. One party had evidently bumped into another. "D and who are you? Cawn't yer see, mate, I'm taking up company rations? Blimy, but 'ow the 'ell I am going to find the way blowed if I know. Do you know where Company is? I'm taking up sandbags.
We usually built solid parapets of clay and sandbags high enough and strong to protect a man standing up, but the French usually do not allow this to be done. They had adopted their favorite method of entrenchment here, namely, a series of low parapets built in the form of half moons. My battalion held seventeen of these half moons and our brigade, I understood from our Brigade Major Lieut. Col.
They cease in many cases to bear the slightest likeness to the ordinary trenches of commerce; they become deep gorges in mountains of sandbags. I have sometimes wished that those officers who apparently write home to devoted bands of female workers asking for more sandbags would get in touch with me instead.
About one hundred yards on my right, at the junction of "King Street" and "St. Helena Street," my guide pointed me out the Brigade dug-out. Depositing my camera and outfit close to some sandbags I went inside and introduced myself. Four officers were present. "By Jove!" said one, "you are welcome. Have a drink. Here's a cigarette." "Here you are," said another, "have a match.
Give a man an hour with a spade in that chalky subsoil and a few sandbags and he will make a fortress for himself which only a direct hit by a shell can destroy. He ducks under the sweep of bullets when he is not firing and with his steel helmet is fairly safe from shrapnel while he waits in his lair until the other fellow comes.
Captain O'Halloran brought the news home, when he returned from parade. "Get ready your sandbags, Carrie; examine your stock of provisions; prepare a store of lint, and plaster." "What on earth are you talking about, Gerald?" "It is war, Carrie. The Dons have refused to accept our mail, and have cut off all intercourse with the mainland." Carrie turned a little pale.
"We used to fill sandbags and stick them on top of the parapet to make it higher, but no use, they would be there about an hour, and then Fritz would turn loose and blow them to bits. My neck used to be sore from ducking shells and bullets.
Street after street, with doors locked, shutters closed, sandbags, mattresses, or little heaps of earth piled over cellar windows; streets in which the only sound was that of one's own feet, where the loneliness was made more lonely by some forgotten dog cringing against the closed door and barking nervously as one hurried past.
Word Of The Day