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Updated: June 5, 2025
The defenders, under the preliminary bombardment, get into the dug-outs with their rifles and machine guns, and emerge as fresh as paint as the attack comes up. Obviously there is much scope for invention and contrivance in the dug-out as the reservoir of counter attacks. Its possibilities have been very ably exploited by the Germans.
Here and here alone was it possible to forget the brown wilderness above the cliff, and all the toil and bloodshed between ourselves and the summit of Achi Baba. Casualties are soon forgotten in war. In the dusty and exposed dug-outs, which were now our refuge, men revived.
German Fictions Winter Preparation Albert La Boisselle and Ovillers In the Track of War Regained Ground Enemy Preparations German Dug-outs "There were no Stragglers" Contalmaison Devastation Retreating Germans Death, Victory, Work Work of the R.E. A Parachute Approaching Victory. No. 6
"Does everything go well?" M. Doumer asked. "It is not going at all, now. It is sticking," was the answer. "Some Germans were busy up there in the stone quarries while the others were falling back. They have a covered trench and rapid-fire-gun positions to sweep a zone of fire which they have cleared." Famous stone quarries of Soissons, providing ready-made dug-outs as shelter from shells!
Gun pits, dug-outs and the inevitable grassy bank provided all we wanted, and when, an hour later, some few gas shells fell in the valley, we were all snugly under cover. All that is to say except the cookers and with them Serjeant Thomson and his cooks; these were in a shallow sunken road, and had a shell within a few yards of them, fortunately doing no damage.
It was prefixed by the usual number of mysterious letters and figures and ran: "The Brigadier has noticed with regret the tendency of several officers to crowd into one dug-out. This practice must cease. An officer should have his dug-out as near those of his own men as possible, and should not pass his time in the dug-outs belonging to officers of other companies."
The shooting was good, but so were the trenches deep and narrow, and steep-sided, with dug-outs scooped under the bank and strong traverses localising the effect of any shell that fell exactly on the trench. There were few casualties, and the Royal Blanks were beginning to congratulate themselves on getting off so lightly as the fire slackened and almost died away.
This was in reality a series of dug-outs along a road some little distance behind our second lines, but in the range of the German guns, which persistently tried for our artillery just beside us. Within an hour of my arrival I was treated to a taste of one of the forms of German kultur which was new at the time. At least it was new to me tear gas.
At 11 p.m., the relief having been carried out, Captain Andrews, Dickinson and I, with Sergeant-Major Preston and a few runners, proceeded to Battalion Headquarters, which are at a strong point a little nearer the line. Then we turned back and proceeded to the dug-outs where we were on July 1 and July 2. Allen had preceded us to take over, and Giffin was with a working party in the trenches.
Otherwise they were as still as pig at noonday. We held on through the maze, past trench-sweepers of a handy light pattern, with their screw-tailed charge all ready; and a grave or so; and when I came on men who merely stood within easy reach of their rifles, I knew I was in the second line. When they lay frankly at ease in their dug-outs, I knew it was the third.
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