Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
Time was when the thin, tired breaking line of men who fought the Prussian Guard at Ypres in 1914 and beat them had hard work to find the fire-trenches, let alone the communication ones; when a daily supervision was a nerve-shattering nightly crawl, and dug-outs were shell-holes covered with a leaking mackintosh.
If there are no dug-outs there is only one thing to be done, and that is what Vane was doing. To lie flat on the ground minimises the danger except from a direct hit; and a direct hit is remarkably sudden.
The place gave a natural protection and all around the edge were dug-outs which had been built by the French, running back into the hill, some of them more than a hundred feet. In the darkness we could see braziers glowing softly red at the mouth of each burrow. There was a cheerful, mouth-watering smell of cookery on the air, a garlicky smell, with now and then a whiff of spicy wood smoke.
Staying in this section of trench, I filmed several scenes of the men at work repairing and rebuilding the sides which the night previous had been destroyed by shell-fire and the heavy rains. Then followed scenes of relief parties coming in, and working parties hard at it trying to drain their dug-outs. This latter seemed to me an almost superhuman task; but through it all, the men smiled.
There were deep tunnel dug-outs, extending into the bowels of the earth, in the support area, but these were never used. In the front line there were no such dug-outs, except for such purposes as signal office and platoon head-quarters.
Captain Blaikie stands leaning against a traverse in the fire-trench, superintending the return of a party from picket duty. They file in, sleepy and dishevelled, through an archway in the parapet, on their way to dug-outs and repose. The last man in the procession is Bobby Little, who has been in charge all night.
One or two dug-outs were drifting about in the roam ready to be put in service at any time. When the flat was brought up, the side of the house was cut away as the only means of getting the animals out, and the cattle were driven on board the boat.
Grigsby composedly seated himself on the bank, his rifle between his knees. "I'll see about some breakfast, then," volunteered Mr. Adams. And away he strode. Charley had listened with dismay to the conversation. The last of the gold seekers' dug-outs had left in a hurry, and was disappearing up-stream.
The last had been so named by the Leicestershire "New Army" Brigade, who had originally built the trench. Hannescamps, a minute village, lay 1,000 yards from the line, partly hidden by a hollow, and, with an excellent bank full of dug-outs, was a home for Battalion Headquarters and one Company.
"What is that devilish stuff?" the latter queried. It was plain from his voice that he meditated no treachery. "Oh! I was going to tell you. It is a product of German ingenuity, designed, I believe, for the purpose of quelling riotous and insurrectionary prisoners. It was efficacious, also, in taking pill boxes and clearing out dug-outs and the like.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking