Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 27, 2025
One company was more horrified over having found a German tied to a trench parados to be killed by British shell fire as a field punishment than by the horrors of other men equally mashed and torn, or at having crawled over the moist bodies of the dead, or slept among them, or been covered with spatters of blood and flesh for that incident struck home with a sense of brutal militarism which was the thing in their minds against which they were fighting.
Half an hour later we erected a wooden cross in Tommy's grave-strewn garden. It bore the following inscription written in pencil: Pte. # 4326 MacDonald. Pte. # 7864 Gardner. Pte. # 9851 Preston. Pte. # 6940 Allen. Royal Fusiliers. "They did their bit." Quietly we slipped back into the trench and piled our picks and shovels on the parados. "Got yer mouth-organ 'andy, Nobby?" some one asked.
The parapet was sufficiently high to give good command over the ground in front. During the winter it silted down and in many places it became not even bullet-proof. The parados was fairly good, though in many places there was none at all.
How should Michael Parados, the Greek robber, know the name of the gentleman he had killed? He gave a minute description of him. He said he had red hair." "You are not a Greek for nothing," laughed Arisa. "Did you ever hear of Odysseus?" asked Aristarchi. "No. What should I know of your Greek gods? If you were a good Christian, you would not speak of them."
Crossing No Man's Land without clicking any casualties, we came to the German trench and mounted our guns on the parados of same. I never saw such a mess in my life-bunches of twisted barbed wire lying about, shell holes everywhere, trench all bashed in, parapets gone, and dead bodies, why that ditch was full of them, theirs and ours. It was a regular morgue.
Now they are opened at high tides, so that the tide can rush in and maintain the inundation, and at low tides they are closed, so that the fresh water of the Yser can overflow its banks. On the top of the railway bank is a fine series of sandbag parapets and parados. R., however, pointed out that the parados is so good as to be really another parapet.
It was a noon of grey mist through which the alignments of huts and tents were barely visible. Instinctively avoiding the wet earth of the parados, he went round, and, tired after the recent spell of physical drill, sat down on the equally wet sandbags of the model parapet, a pathetic, lonely little khaki figure isolated for the moment by the kindly mist from an uncomprehending world.
Alternate frosts and thaws, rain and snow, soon filled our trenches with mud and slush, into which parapets and parados either crumbled gradually or collapsed wholesale. No sooner could we repair one length, than another would give way, and through it all many posts had to live with water over their ankles and no proper drying accommodation.
Tomson, C.S.M. Gorse, and others, were prepared to hold it against all attacks. The original parados was cut into fire steps, bomb blocks were built in "Little Willie" and "North Face," and the garrison generally reorganized.
Gun after gun, battery after battery, picked up the range and poured shells over and into the wood, went searching every hollow and hole, rending and destroying trench and dug-out, parapet and parados.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking