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Updated: June 18, 2025
The French salient was saluting the wire-stringers. Back under shelter they tumbled; whistles sounded distantly; a trench mortar crashed; then the accentless tattoo of machine guns broke from every emplacement. "The east is turning a little yellow," he said calmly. "I believe this matter is going through. Toss some dust into the air. Which way?" "North," said the girl. "Good.
In the morning I rode up to Waggon Hill, and found that "Lady Anne" had at last arrived there, and was already in position. She was hauled up in the night in three pieces, each drawn by two span of oxen. Some thirty yards in front of her, in an emplacement of its own, stands the 12lb. naval gun which has been in that neighbourhood for some days.
I have in mind the particular case of young Angus MacTaggart, a lad from Glasgow, with freckles and a sunny disposition. He was a sapper by trade, and on his shoulders there devolved, on one occasion, the job of covering a trench mortar emplacement with a camouflage of wire and grass which would screen the hole in which sat the mortar from the prying gaze of Hun aeroplanes.
As he got an unbroken view up the street and on to the higher ground that stretched away from the village, Jack beheld a pitched battle in progress with a skirmish line stretched out as far as the eye could carry. The Germans had raffled to the defense of their hiding place and had hurriedly thrown up an emplacement for their machine guns.
The Germans were particularly restless that night; kept on squibbing away whilst we were digging, and as it was some time before we had the sap deep enough to be able to stand upright without fear of a puncture in some part of our anatomy, it was altogether most unpleasant. At about an hour before dawn we had got as far as making the emplacement.
The recess is roofed over, heavily protected with sandbags, and lined with iron plates; for a machine-gun emplacement is the object of frequent and pressing attention from high-explosive shells. There are loopholes to right and left, but not in front. These deadly weapons prefer diagonal or enfilade fire. It is not worth while to fire them frontally.
Their careful emplacement of their chief buildings, which were probably used from the earliest times for astronomical purposes, their invention of different kinds of dials, and their division of the day into those hours which we still use, are all solid, though not perhaps very brilliant, achievements.
"It would never do to give away one's real gun positions. If we did, the Bosches would sit tight and say nothing at the time, but just make a note of the occurrence. Then, one fine morning, when they really meant business, they would begin by droping a Black Maria on top of each emplacement; and where would you and your platoon be then, with an attack coming on and us out of action? So long!"
I must say that the gas was clearly visible and had exactly the same smell as horseradish. It had no immediate effect on the eyes or throat. I suspected a delayed action and my party all put their masks on. "On arriving at the emplacement we met a very thick cloud of the same stuff drifting from the front line system.
For a number of reasons he thinks that will be a new machine gun emplacement; here at the centre of the farm wall they have been making another. This battery here isn't it plain? Well, it's a dummy. The grass in front of it hasn't been scorched, and there's been no serious wear on the road here for a week.
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