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A trench had been dug about twenty yards long by six feet wide and two deep. This was piled with faggots and small wood four or five feet high. This was lighted at midday, and by four p.m. the trench was a bed of red-hot ashes, the heat from which was so intense that the men who raked and levelled it with long poles could not stand it for more than a minute at a time.
Our arrival at the trench in which we had sheltered the day before coincided with the whizz-phutt of a 4·2 dud. "I shall be sorry if I get you killed looking for my pipe," said the major cheerfully. We waited for the next shell, which exploded well behind us, and then hastened to the spot where our quest was really to commence. Four gunners belonging to the rd Brigade stood idly in the trench.
It was a perfect autumn night. Every star in the world of space seemed to have been crowded into our own particular expanse of sky, and each one glowed like a tiny lantern. When I had found a patch of sand and had dug a trench for my hip and shoulder, I crawled into the sleeping bag and lay for half an hour looking up at the bespangled canopy above my head.
And all the time the captured trench was pelted by shells high-explosive and shrapnel. At the entrances of the communication trenches that led back to the support trenches the fiercest fighting raged continually, with men struggling to block the path with sandbags and others striving to tear them down, while on both sides their fellows fought over them with bayonet and butt.
'If you will take the trouble to turn into the field which borders the trench, take the foot-path to the left when you arrive at an angle of the fortification, and keep straight on, till you see me, I will precede you to a secluded place, where the affair can be conducted without fear of interruption. 'Fear of interruption! thought Mr. Winkle.
He then immediately occupied an entrenched and fortified house, from which it was easy to inflict damage upon the camp. This done, the Duke, with a few attendants, rode forward to reconnoitre the enemy in person. He found him in a well fortified position, having the river on his front, which served as a moat to his camp, and with a deep trench three hundred yards beyond, in addition.
When the excavated earth is easily removed figure 4 shows a good profile. The enemy's infantry, as well as his artillery, will generally have great difficulty in seeing this type of trench.
Fearless to a fault, up and down the line he went during the night of Friday and Saturday morning. He was cut across the chest with a fragment of shell and had a bullet wound through his shoulder, still he refused to leave. Finally he sat down in his trench never to rise again. During the night he had carried a number of wounded to the dressing station but neglected to have his own wounds dressed.
Several times bullets whistled unpleasantly near my head. Passing along the trench, I filmed a mitrailleuse battery in action, which was literally mowing down the Germans as fast as they appeared. Then I filmed another section of men, while the bullets were flying all around them. Several could not resist looking round and laughing at the camera.
Once landed on the beach, the shore end was laid in the trench dug for it, one end of the cable entering the cable hut through a small hole in its flooring, where after some adjustment and much shifting of plugs and coaxing of galvanometers, the ship way out in the bay was in communication with the land, through that tiny place, scarce larger than a sentry-box, in which a man has barely room enough to turn around.
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