United States or Martinique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Night after night we slept in clothes and boots, with our equipment on us, and woke at intervals to peer into the dark for an hour, or see that others peered then two more hours' sleep and another turn of duty and so on till we were called for stand-to variously at three, four, five or six a.m., as the season changed.
The surprise was perfect, and the enemy, never for a moment expecting an attack at that hour, were killed in large numbers before they could even "stand-to."
That's 'ow they wykes you up at stand-to, or w'en your turn comes fer sentry. Not bad, wot?" I said that it all depended on whether one was doing the waking or the sleeping, and that, for my part, when sleeping, I would lie with my head out. "You wouldn't if you belonged to our lot. They'd give it to you on the napper just as quick as 'it you on the feet. You ain't on to the game, that's all.
I tried could I find a prisoner to bring in" our Colonel has promised a reward of fifty francs to the man who can round up a whole live Bosche "but there were nane. They had got their wounded away, I doubt." "Never mind," says Simson. "Sergeant, see these men get some sleep now. Stand-to at two-thirty, as usual. I must go and pitch in a report, and I shall say you all did splendidly. Good-night!"
He's travelled all over the temperate zone; but he says that directly he marries he's going to give up all that, and be a regular stay-at-home. You would be nowhere safer than in his hands. 'It is true, she answered. 'He is a highly desirable match, and I should be well provided for, and probably very safe in his hands. 'Then don't be skittish, and stand-to.
It was my servant come to wake me.... I must have fallen asleep. Was it stand-to so soon? I sat up and rubbed my eyes and awoke to the anguish of another day. The sergeant stood at the cellar door, framed in the bright morning light. "You are to come upstairs!" he said.
Men who were sentries by day or were the covering party for the wiring might be detailed for this. After that was over the same men took turns as sentries. Sleep was confined to what those not on duty could snatch, wrapped only in the extra covering of a waterproof sheet, in a sitting posture on the fire-step. At dawn, when the men at last could have slept heavily, came morning stand-to.
"Stand-to" was at half-past two in the morning, when we harnessed up and waited for orders. Often our cavalry would sight a Turkish patrol and away we went across the wadi into no-man's-land playing hounds to the Turkish hare. Rarely did we approach near enough to get a shot at him for he departed at the gallop at first sight of us, and in addition to his start he had the foot of us for speed.
The Battalion dump was shifted from Mansura Ridge to Kurd Valley during that night and the ration convoy on its way to Mansura had to be found and led into our new area difficult work, but most successfully accomplished by our energetic second in command. The dropping bullets were particularly annoying the next morning, two men being killed and four wounded in their shelters during stand-to.
The men soon learnt the duties that fell upon them as a consequence of trench warfare: the early morning stand-to, the constant vigil of the neutral ground between the lines, and the imperative necessity of keeping one's head low. Hitherto the men knew little of the nature or use of guns, but now glimmerings of the mystery surrounding artillery fire soon dawned.
Word Of The Day