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Updated: September 19, 2025
I don't want to be outflanked." McKay retired and presently came upon two battalions of Guards, Grenadiers and Fusiliers, advancing under the command of the Duke of Cambridge. "General Wilders, sir, is very hard pressed in the Sandbag Battery," said McKay, briefly. "I'll march at once to his aid," replied the duke, promptly.
But the country was clear and the line undamaged, and we continued our slow advance. Presently Colenso came into view a hundred tin-pot houses under the high hills to the northward. We inspected it deliberately. On a mound beyond the village rose the outline of the sandbag fort constructed by the Naval Brigade. The flagstaff, without the flag, still stood up boldly.
The nervy Boches had spotted our sap as something new, and their bullets, whacking up against our newly-thrown-up parapet, made us glad we had worked so busily. We were bound to complete that emplacement, so, at convenient intervals, we crept to the opening, and after saying "one, two, three!" suddenly plumped a newly-filled sandbag on the top.
"If you ask my candid opinion," he said, looking up from his paper, "I should say that young Lord Antony Trefusis was in the soup already. I seem to see the consommé splashing about his ankles. He's had a note telling him to be under the oak tree in the Park at midnight. He's just off there at the end of this installment. I bet Long Jack, the poacher, is waiting there with a sandbag.
So we pumped and drained and built new sandbag walls all winter, and as fast as one portion of our line was renewed another portion would collapse, or, more disheartening still, be shelled to bits by the big "minenwerfer." This was a German gun brought up to this front to counteract our trench mortar.
He was a man from another regiment, who had come down from his support dug-out to "nose around after a spud or two." The German sniper had "bagged" him in the ankle and he had crawled into the cellar still with his sandbag of "spuds" to wait until someone came by.
In some ways he bears a marked resemblance to that sagacious bird, the ostrich; and because of that resemblance, I have remarked on this question of disposing sandbags in terms of pain and grief. The easiest thing to do with a sandbag in a trench, if you don't want it, is to chuck it out.
Even now the Russians, regaining heart, had made it the first aim of their fresh attack. General Dannenberg, who was now in chief command, had a twofold object: he was resolved to press the centre of the English position and at the same time vigorously attack the right, throwing all his weight first upon the Sandbag Battery.
They would level our sandbag breastworks and blow our frail shelters to smithereens. We had no dugouts and no communication trenches. With a shell of tremendous power they would rip up yards of our makeshift defenses and kill half a dozen of our boys. Sometimes we would groan aloud and pray to see a few German legs and arms fly to the four winds as compensation. But no.
It was an invitingly furnished room of cushioned couches, paintings, tapestries, soft chairs, warmly toned rugs. The desk at which Merle toiled was ornate and shining. Ex-Private Cowan felt a sudden revulsion. He was back, knee-deep in trench bilge, tortured in all his being, looking at death from behind a sandbag. Vividly he recalled why he had endured that torture.
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