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Updated: June 24, 2025
As Prescott stepped down to the duck-boards he saw Private Berger come back into the trench from the adjoining traverse, the latter a jog in the trench line intended to prevent the enemy from raking any great length of trench during an attack. "I hadn't an idea that just raising my head over the parapet would bring cannon fire so promptly," Dick murmured to Ribaut.
Brigade Headquarters marched on and with it the Duo to where a long line of duck-boards led into a line of wide trenches. The Ten Hundred came to a halt in the immediate rear, received the order to lie down and waited. A night of wondrous calm and quiet. Within one mile of a watchful foe and not a sound.
"Thanks," said Miss Raynard, and they all made a move. "It's deuced dark," said Donovan. "Here, let me. I'll go first with a candle so that you shan't miss the duck-boards." He passed out, Tommy Raynard after him. Peter stood back to let Julie pass, and as she did so she said: "You're very glum and very polite to-night, Solomon. What's the matter?" "Am I?" said Peter; "I didn't know it.
Shells came, but went short or over; the shell holes were neatly patched up; the road went on. Here and there a tree had to be cut, but not often, not many of them were left; it was mostly digging and grubbing up roots, and pushing wheelbarrows along planks and duck-boards, and filling up with stones. Sometimes the engineers would come: that was when streams were crossed.
After the others had filed into the traverses Captain Ribaut rested his right hand on the parapet, causing the little pencil of electric light to glow three times in quick succession. Then he sprang back into the nearer traverse. Bang! A shell landed in the vacated length of trench, tearing up the duck-boards and gouging the walls of the trench.
And one day far away from X the road grew very fine indeed. It was going proudly through a mighty city, sweeping in like a river; you would not think that it ever remembered duck-boards. There were great palaces there, with huge armorial eagles blazoned in stone, and all along each side of the road was a row of statues of kings.
Then snatching up my map, coat, hat, and goggles, I burst from the hut and began slithering along the duck-boards towards the hangars, at the same time endeavouring to fasten the unwilling hooks of my Flying Corps tunic and devoutly hoping that I should not be late for the bomb raid. For weeks we had been standing by for this raid in particular, the object of which was to bomb Douai aerodrome.
"You will do well to talk in low tones," the French lieutenant cautioned them in whispers, "for, when we enter the front line trench we shall be only about a quarter of a kilometer from the Huns' first line trench." With that they started forward. A short stroll through a communication trench brought them to the first line ditch. As the ground was wet here duck-boards had been laid to walk on.
Visiting those trenches straight from the Somme the other day, with their duck-boards and sandbags, and the occasional ping of a sniper's bullet, and the momentary spasm of field guns and trench mortars which appeared in the official summary next day as "artillery and trench mortar activity" after the Somme, I say, one found oneself looking on it, in the terms of the friend who went with me, as "war de luxe."
The rain still sogged down, and ye gods! the Kid was tired. Away into the night there stretched a path of slippery duck-boards, threading its way between shell holes half filled with water. Men loomed up out of the darkness and went past him, slipping and sliding, cursing below their breath.
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