United States or Armenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then he laid down the receiver with a happy sigh, and crawled out of the dug-out on to the duck-board. "Now we'll have a look round the sentries, Sergeant-Major," he said. But the pair had hardly rounded three traverses when Bobby was haled back to the Signal Station. "Why did you leave the telephone just now?" inquired a cold voice. "I was going to visit my sentries, sir."
The journey up to the front line was far from pleasant. After crossing the canal it consisted of a six-mile walk along a duck-board track across one of the most devastated areas on the whole front, and to add to the difficulties, the enemy's artillery was very active. Owing to lack of roads for the transport, each man carried four days' rations.
The duck-board running outside the dug-outs behind the guns had had six direct hits, and two of the dug-outs were blown in, also No. 2 gun had had its off-wheel smashed by a splinter; two men rather badly wounded. For an hour there was no further news, and, assisted by my two clerks, I proceeded peacefully with the ordinary routine work of the adjutant's department.
Before I leave the subject of the inundations, I ought to say that across the stretch of muddy water the Belgians hold a good many little islets and pieces of ground, which, for some reason or other, are a few feet higher than the rest of the reclaimed plain. Communication with these is kept, not by boats, but by paths of duck-board which lie across the flooded lands.
In his hair, down his neck, in his boots, everywhere. Through the trenches just behind the standing place ran a deeper trench or drain to carry the water away, and this was covered over with a rough board called a duck-board. Underneath this duck-board ran a continual stream of water.
They were in the northern bank of the Yser Canal about half a mile south of Boesinghe. The front was approached by means of several long duck-board tracks, in places more like wooden bridges than the ordinary trench footboards. In the morning I did my best to investigate where these tracks started, not altogether an easy matter in an entirely strange country.
If while standing on a duck-board he happened to be immune while his pals were being knocked out he would carry it about with him all day if possible. On one occasion he was very nearly shot for insubordination, because he would go out into No-man's-land after a flower which he thought would help him. "Not that his superstition was purely selfish.
We see, first, the night journey of the four infantry battalions and their machine-gun company and trench-mortar battery, from Albert to Pozières by motor-bus, then the four-mile march of the troops in darkness and rain along a duck-board track, to the trenches they were to relieve.
But the wire belts and the duck-board tracks were still there. When we approached the entrance to the cellars under the ruined abbey at Eaucourt, we noticed traces of men living there. Smoke was rising out of the ruins and there were recent footmarks about, and some tins of soapy water.
A man would go along the trench in a hurry, make a misstep on one end of the duck-board and down he would go in mud and freezing water to the waist. In these cold, wet garments he must stay all night. The tension was very great. As the soldiers had to work in the night, so the Salvation Army men and women worked in the night to serve them.
Word Of The Day