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Updated: May 18, 2025
We located all of their communication trenches leading back to the rear; and at uncertain intervals we covered roads and trenches with bursts of searching fire. The German gunners were by no means inactive. They, too, profited by their knowledge of night life in the firing-line, their knowledge of soldier nature.
Before one reaches the firing-line he must pass villages of men, camps of men, bivouacs of men, who are feeding, mending, repairing, and burying the men at the "front." It is these latter that make the mob of gypsies, which is apparently without head or order or organization.
The engineer had backed the train under the cover of the cut, and presently he and the conductor came up with guns and joined the firing-line. "I say, Shorty," said Si, coming down to where that worthy was stationed, "what d' you think o' the boys now? They take to this like a duck to water. They think it's more fun than squirrel-huntin'. Listen."
He was thoroughly familiar with the country, while the troops composing this wing were exhausted by the charge. This wing had no reserve that the firing-line knew of, and, as a matter of fact, had none except two battalions of the 71st New York, which had not got into battle, and which were scattered along the road from the San Juan River to Siboney.
The floor of the trench is also sloped for purposes of draining. Some trenches are provided with head-cover, and others with overhead cover, the latter, of course, giving protection from the weather as well as from shrapnel balls and splinters of shells.... At all points subject to shell-fire access to the firing-line from behind is provided by communication-trenches.
He did not receive all of the wounds at the same time, over half an hour elapsing between the first and the last. Up to receiving the last wound he had declined to leave the firing-line, but by that time he had lost so much blood that he had to be sent to the rear. The man's wiry toughness was as notable as his courage.
Nations now realize that in such a time as this all men up to forty may be required for the firing-line; and this means that all the men from forty to seventy must be rendered especially efficient and physically fit in order to stand back of the fighting forces as a dependable reserve money, power, and brains.
The two bodies lay upon the sand as we stepped down. The metallic rattle of the firing-line sounded far away. We man-handled all our medical equipment and stores from the hold of the lighter to the beach. We had orders to "fall in" the stretcher-bearers, and work in open formation to the firing-line. The Kapanja Sirt runs right along one side of Suvla Bay.
A draft from this camp and many drafts from all this great collection of camps are going "up the line" to-night. "Up the line." The phrase means a long railway journey, very many hours of travelling perhaps, for the train moves slowly. The journey will end where the railway stops short of the firing-line, and these men will join their comrades, filling the gaps in many battalions.
Next day we found ourselves many miles behind the firing-line, once more in France, with a whole month's holiday in prospect, comfortably conscious that one could walk round a corner or look over a wall without preliminary reconnaissance or subsequent extirpation. As for the holiday itself, unreasonable persons are not lacking to point out that it is of the busman's variety.
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