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Updated: May 21, 2025
The two previous wars had, without exaggeration, deprived the Serbian fighting forces of one-tenth their number a tenth that was of the very best of first-line troops. Added to this was another serious handicap, possibly even more serious. Serbia had, indeed, emerged victorious from the two wars, with a large stretch of conquered territory at her backdoor.
However, they were not always so fortunate, as later experience proved. Here there had been little serious fighting for months and the trenches were at their best. Elsewhere the officers' dugouts were often but little better than those of the men. The first-line trenches were connected with two lines of support or reserve trenches built in precisely the same fashion, and each heavily wired.
An explosion and the prisoner might be blown to bits, or if the captor were, another Briton took charge of the prisoner. Persistently stubborn were the captors in holding on to prisoners who were trophies out of that inferno, and when a Briton was back in the first-line trench with his German his delight was greater in delivering his man alive than in his own safety.
Behind the sentries, who peered through the rifle slits every once in a while, flowed the usual populace of the first-line trench, passing as casually as if they were on a Parisian sidewalk, officers as miry as their men, poilus of the Engineer Corps with an eye to the state of the rifle boxes, and an old, unshaven soldier in light-brown corduroy trousers and blue jacket, who volunteered the information that the Boches had thrown a grenade at him as he turned the corner "down there" "It didn't go off."
An outburst of screaming shells overhead that became a continuous, roaring sweep like that of a number of endless railroad trains in the air signified that the guns which had been idle were all speaking. Every one by scattered practice shots had registered on the German first-line trench at the point where its shell-bursts would form its link in the chain of bursts.
On the Lingekopf-Barrenkopf front the French were driven out of a first-line trench on the Schratzmannele, but they recovered most of the ground by a counterattack. Similarly on the summit of the Hartmannsweilerkopf, where the Germans had also obtained a footing in the French trenches, they were subsequently ejected again. These trenches had been captured with the aid of blazing liquids. Quentin.
Hadn't Joe Little and Harry Corwin and Jimmy Hill left school to join the aviation service? Weren't Jed Flarris and Phil Martin and a bunch of Brighton boys in Uncle Sam's navy? And hadn't Herb Whitcomb and Roy Flynn made history in the first-line trenches? Yes, the boys of Brighton were doing their bit.
Without them Germany would have been helpless upon the sea, would have ceased to exist as a maritime power. Her first-line ships lay securely in their harbors, unable to venture forth and match the longer-ranged, heavier-gunned vessels of the British, ably supplemented by the French fleet. Just how many submarines Germany possessed at the beginning of the war cannot be stated.
On the heels of the explosion came a furious burst of discharging artillery. "This must be what you have been expecting, Major," shouted Ribaut over the racket. "A barrage!" Down the line ran the noise of bombardment, the thing becoming more furious every instant. Then some shells landed in first-line trenches nearby. "Take shelter!" shouted Captain Ribaut. "Now! At once!"
Half a mile in the air, apparently over a point midway between what had been the first-line trenches of the opposing armies, a stationary balloon showed where Jerry and an observation officer were doing duty on that fateful day.
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