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Similar feelings were evoked towards the Brigadier, General Pagan, in whose small frame beat a lion's heart. When the frontage of the Brigade was changed from one to two battalions, we had to give up Baquerolle and Carvin and occupy instead the barren fields on the other side of the Calonne road, where most wretched front-line accommodation existed.
Front-line trenches are usually designated by letters or numbers, running in regular order, from right to left in each sector. Certain important points may have special names. Communication trenches are always given distinctive names. Probably the majority of these names are those of prominent streets and roads in England, especially in London. At Messines we had "Surrey Lane," "Stanley Road" and "Plum Avenue" for communication trenches, while our front line embraced the whole series of "C" trenches. During the winter we occupied the "N" and "O" front-line trenches, while our communication trenches bore such names as "Poppy Lane," "Bois Carré" (afterward called "Chicory Trench" because it ran through a chicory field), and the "P.
Their sons are gaining their own living; one daughter is married, the others are arriving at the marriageable age. One day the Hun sweeps down on them. The sons escape to join the French army; the girls and their parents stay behind to guard their property. They are immediately evacuated from Vimy and sent to some city, such as Drocourt, further behind the Hun front-line.
Since the Army is the Nation, they know much, though they are officially told little. They all recognize that the old-fashioned "victory" of the past is almost as obsolete as a rifle in a front-line trench. They all accept the new war, which means grinding down and wearing out the enemy by every means and plan and device that can be compassed.
Then his mind went back to two months ago the hopes he'd had, his meeting with her at the station, his asking her father for her hand in marriage. It was like the old front-line trench, when reënforcements had failed to come up: there was nothing for it but to dig one's self in and stick it out. He had been shown the door with as little ceremony as an intruding peddler.
The delay, however, had absented him, of course, from morning roll-call, and he was sentenced to thirty days repairing wire on the front-line trenches, which was often equivalent to a death sentence, for as many men were shot during the performance of this duty as came in safely.
Perhaps they were facing it. He could not conceive of a careless, thoughtless, emotionless attitude toward this first night in the front-line trench. Dorn gradually grew more acutely sensitive to the many faint, rustling, whispering sounds in and near the dugout. A soldier came stooping into the opaque square of the dugout door. His rifle, striking the framework, gave out a metallic clink.
There were many inventive brains of high quality working at great pressure during all the days of holding on, but one of the cleverest ideas put into operation was the arrangement devised by an engineer whereby rifles were firing automatically in the front-line trenches after every man had left. There is no doubt the Turks were completely bluffed.
So you learn to tolerate the body, to despise Death and to place all your reliance on courage which when it is found at its best is the power to endure for the sake of others. When we think of God, we think of Him in just about the same way that a Tommy in the front-line thinks of Sir Douglas Haig. Heaven is a kind of General Headquarters.
Going to the Italian front with his battalion, he won the Military Cross for bravery in tending wounded under fire. James joined the Royal Engineers, Sound Ranging Section, and after much front-line work was given charge of a Sound Ranging School to teach other officers this latest and most scientific addition to the art of war.
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