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The hurricanes of artillery fire which our gunners poured upon the enemy positions for twenty miles in depth churned up deep shell-craters which intermingled and made pits which the rains and floods filled to the brim. The only way of walking was by "duck-boards," tracks laid down across the bogs under enemy fire, smashed up day by day, laid down again under cover of darkness.
I have said before that you do not walk on the bottom of the trench as you did in Gallipoli, but on a narrow wooden causeway not unlike the bridge on which ducks wander down from the henhouse to the yard colloquially known as the "duck-boards." The days have probably passed when a man could be drowned in the mud of a communication trench.
A red flare went up and I heard the feet of many soldiers running along the duck-boards. I only had time to roll into the ditch at the foot of the back of the parapet, where I was quite safe from observation, when they manned their trench to repel the "raid."
And so we come in sight of the support trenches where we are to dwell for a week before we go on for another mile over the hills, where the black fountains are rising. A Walk in Picardy Picture any village you know. In such a village as that the trench begins. That is to say, there are duck-boards along a ditch, and the ditch runs into a trench. Only the village is no longer there.
We accordingly sat in the trench and waited. Darkness fell upon a beautiful summer evening before the observation balloons disappeared. At 9.30 we decided that it was safe to begin work. The work to be done consisted of repairing duck-boards.
He was bandaged up, profusely bleeding, and went stoically down the hill, supported by a companion, leaving a red trail along the wooden duck-boards that paved the trench. I went down two saps which the Italians had pushed out, one to within twenty yards, the other to within ten yards, of the Austrian front line. Here every one spoke in a low whisper or by signs.
At one section, to save my dying a sailor's death, duck-boards had been placed over the mud to facilitate easier travelling. It made me feel like going on for ever, after ploughing for hours through mud the consistency of treacle. Eventually I arrived on the high ground near Mouquet.
But it is always unpleasant to step off the duck-boards in wet weather. Seeing that the enemy may have fixed rifles trained on you at any bend of the trench, it is unwise to carry a light; and in a dark night and an unaccustomed trench you are almost sure to flounder. A party of men loaded with new duck-boards is blocked ahead of you.
Many of our camps were hardly better than the trenches. Only by duck-boards could one walk about the morass in which huts were built and tents were pitched. In the wagon lines gunners tried in vain to groom their horses, and floundered about in their gum boots, cursing the mud which clogged bits and chains and bridles, and could find no comfort anywhere between Dickebusch and Locre.
I wandered down the path of duck-boards, over the swamp of the Somme, filthy in appearance, reeking in its stench, and littered with thousands of empty bottles, that showed the character of the drunken orgies to which the Huns had devoted themselves. I reached the canal bank. Lying alongside was the blackened ribs of a barge.
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