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Updated: September 22, 2025
An English private soldier was detailed to go on listening-post with me. Again, the raw soldier is never left to his own devices on first coming in. He is given the support of a veteran on all occasions, unless under some very special condition. "Hie!" called the private to me, "where're yer goin' to?" "Back, ye bally ass!" He looked his contempt.
Ping!!! There was a ringing metallic sound, as when a 22-caliber bullet strikes the target in a shooting-gallery, and the big soldier who had incautiously exposed himself crumpled up in the bottom of the trench with a bullet through his helmet and through his brain. The young officer in command of the listening-post cursed softly.
My chance came sooner than I had hoped for. I hadn't realized, what I discovered after a few more turns in the trenches, that guard duty is the easiest job there is. I was eager for a change, and when I heard an English sergeant call out: "I want a Canadian to go on listening-post duty," I hopped down from my little perch and volunteered: "I'll go, Sergeant. Take me."
My first duty was on "listening-post" in one of these tunnels, the hole where I was being just large enough to lie in, and it seemed almost like being buried alive. Here I did not get my twenty-four hours' rest as at Kemmil, but I worked on a six-hour shift and had only ten hours off; even then we were not sent back to rest billets, but had to stay in the dugout at the top of the shaft.
Lieutenant Riley, who was in command of the listening-post for that night, left the workers to themselves, both because it was necessary for him to keep a sharp look-out in order to give warning of any attempt to rush the working party, and because officially he was not supposed to know anything of any sap to an officially unrecognized dead German General.
"Prickles," be it noted, being the fitting, if somewhat disrespectful, name which the O.C. carried in the Rifles. "It's yourself has the tongue on ye," admitted Rifleman McRory admiringly, "though I'm wonnering how'll you be schamin' to get another trench dug from the listening-post out to the Gineral."
"I have been looking at that listening-post, and thinking to myself wouldn't it be as well if we ran a sap out to it; it would save the crawling out across the open at night, and keeping the men and some wounded among them maybe cooped up the whole day." "There's something in that," said the Captain, pretending to reflect.
Then suddenly he pulled the tubes out of his ears and gazed about sharply. "There's something in the air!" he cried. "I can hear it!" MacLeod and I strained our eyes. There was nothing visible. "This is an anti-aircraft listening-post, such as the French use," explained Craig, hurriedly. "Between the horns and the microphone in the box you can catch the hum of an engine, even when it is muffled.
Instead of being put on "listening-post" this morning, the Corporal in charge took me with him we went down a long tunnel till we reached the end, and the Corporal put a listening-tube to his ear; he listened a few minutes, and then handed it to me and whispered, "Do you hear anything?" I said, "Yes, I hear some one shovelling."
Since the gunners had already registered the target of the German trench, their fire was just as accurate by night as it would be by day, and shell after shell burst over the German parapet, sweeping their trench with showers of shrapnel. While all this was going on the men at the listening-post had tackled the job of driving their sap out to the German General.
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