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Updated: June 26, 2025
Once or twice there came the smashing tinkle of glass as a periscope was struck and a vexed officer, still holding it, passed it to a rifleman to be laid aside. Only one man was hit. He had been fitting a shutter to the tiny embrasure between sandbags where a machine gun was to be mounted; and the bullet came through and entered his head in the center of the triangle between nose and eyebrows.
Sometimes a shell, whose angle of descent coincided with the slope of the stairs, burst at the bottom of a dug-out, and then, of course, its occupants were killed. If no deep dug-outs were available, the support platoons lived in niches cut into the side of the trench and roofed over with corrugated iron, timber and sandbags. Such shelters afforded little protection against shelling.
The parapet was very low, but this had been raised by a line of sandbags, and behind them five or six of the defenders were lying, firing through the openings between the bags, in answer to the storm of musketry which the enemy were keeping up on the post.
Stretchers and bearers from my section had not yet returned from the emergency dressing station; the crater was now cleared up except of enemy dead, whose partly buried arms and legs still stuck out here and there. A company of the Third Foreign Legion had just come into the crater and had taken station at the loopholes under the parapet of sandbags.
No sooner was the first embrasure unmasked, than the enemy commenced a terrific fire on him; but, undaunted, he continued the work. As each fresh embrasure was unmasked, the enemy's fire was increased. At length only one remained, when, amid a perfect storm of missiles, he courageously mounted the parapet, and uncovered the last, by throwing down the sandbags.
I admit that the fault lies entirely with the harassed and long-suffering gentleman who boasts the proud title of "spoil's officer." I admit But I grow warm, in addition to digressing unpardonably. The trouble is that I always do grow warm, and digress at the mention of sandbags. In part of the Loamshires' front line, mining activity was great.
An instance of the tenacity with which the infantry stuck to their positions was reported from the Berlaere, where the commanding officer and his aid-de-camp were in one of the most exposed positions. Sandbags protected them for some time, but at last the aid-de-camp was struck by shrapnel and had his face virtually blown away.
In the meantime, with the aid of a stick, I gradually pushed away several sandbags which interfered with my view on the parapet. To do this it was necessary to raise myself head and shoulders above the top and, with one arm pushed forward, I worked the bags clear. I felt much better when that job was done.
He watched the dike and now the water is coming in." One more question Cousin Tom asked. "Why did you come to us?" he inquired steadily. "It would have been quicker to go down through the fields to the farms in the valley, to call out Henry Brook and send him with men and shovels and sandbags to stop the flood. To get here is a mile by the road and there was no time to lose."
"When is a door not a door?" was a conundrum of my childhood, and I think the answer was: "When it's ajar." But nowadays there is a better réplique: A door is not a door when it's a dug-out. It is then a hole, kept from falling in upon itself by a log of wood or anything handy. This time, the "anything handy" seemed to be part of an old wheelbarrow, and on top were some sandbags.
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