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Updated: June 15, 2025
We lived a truly Robinson Crusoe life, with the addition of Turkish high-explosives, and bully-beef-and-biscuit stew. Our dug-out was back to the firing-line, and at night we looked out upon the bay. We lay in our blankets watching the white moonlight on the waves, and the black shadows of our ambulance wagons on the silver sand.
In the beginning it probably oozed over the whole stairway, big as it was; then cracks appeared in it, and, gradually, the water has accustomed itself to flow alongside of it, in well dug-out grooves. And water is water, whatever one does with it. It never has any rest. In one place it cuts and files away, and in another it adds to.
These wheels were of the pattern first made by man, and for thousands of years there had been no improvement; just as in some parts of the world the natives to-day still use the dug-out, or canoe made of the trunk or bark of a tree the primitive boat of man. The carts were loaded with seaweed, fish, or reindeer moss.
"They are white men, such as I have spoken of." The canoe gradually drew near, and the old man held out a shaking hand to be helped on board the larger boat; but the wild man remained in his dug-out.
As the river grows in size, the grass huts and dug-out canoes of its upper waters give place to towns which bear names, while large and strangely-shaped boats carry the produce of the country to some great seaport at its mouth, where ships of all nations are waiting to transport it over thousands of miles of ocean to supply us with those many commodities which we have come to regard as daily necessities!
Two months later, on a hot August afternoon, I was paddling along the edge of the Glimmerglass in company with a friend of mine, each of us in a small dug-out canoe, when we found the Porky asleep in the sunshine. He was lying on the nearly horizontal trunk of a tree whose roots had been undermined by the waves till it leaned far out over the lake, hardly a foot from the water.
The battery plunged in amongst the trees, and into safety. "During the night, only patrol and reconnoitering engagements of small consequence are reported." "Straff the Germans and all their works, particularly their mine works!" said Lieutenant Ainsley disgustedly. "Seeing that's exactly what you're told off to do," said the other occupant of the dug-out, "why grouse about it?"
They filed in one by one; I filmed them meanwhile. The journey of thirteen hundred yards to the front line was quite an ordinary walk. It was interesting to note the different tones of the heavy and light shells as they flew overhead, from the dull rush of a 9.2 to the shriek of the 18-pounder. I reached a Company dug-out. It was certainly one of the best I have ever seen.
We hurried on to a bigger dug-out and helped the doctor with several blessés injured that afternoon, and later we helped to remove them back to the village and thence to a field hospital. Just then we began bombarding with the 75's. which we had seen earlier on.
A motley little fleet awaited the party at the water's edge, square-ended, flat-bottomed punts, sharp-bowed bateaux, long, graceful, dug-out canoes, and a commodious push-boat, with cabin and awning, whose motive power was poles. Elk River craft are as abundant as the log cabins on its banks, and their pilots are as numerous as the inhabitants.
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