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Updated: June 26, 2025
Here on high stagings, crudely made of timber and bamboo poles and protected by thick wedges of sandbags, Japanese sailors and some miscellaneous volunteers, grouped in posts of four and five men, lay hour after hour unable to show a finger or move a hand.
This is so far untouched and unharmed, though exposed, like everything else behind the front, to the bombs of German aeroplanes. The great west front has disappeared behind a mountain of sandbags; the side portals are protected in the same way, and inside, the superb carvings of the choir are buried out of sight.
Suddenly a shovel was pushed into my hands, and a rough but kindly voice said: "Here, my lad, lend a hand clearing the trench, but keep your head down, and look out for snipers. One of the Fritz's is a daisy, and he'll get you if you're not careful." Lying on my belly on the bottom of the trench, I filled sandbags with the sticky mud.
Suddenly I came upon a party of sappers mending the parapet top with newly filled sandbags. At that particular section a shell had dropped fairly near and destroyed it, and anyone walking past that gap stood a very good chance of having the top of his head taken off. These men were filling up the breach. "Keep your head well down, sir," shouted one, as I came along.
Here the little brass guns did good service; each time they were fired the recoil sent them tumbling from the top of the sandbags, only, however, to be seized, sponged, and loaded, by the four sailors in charge of each, and then lifted to their place again, crammed with bullets to the muzzle, in readiness to check the next charge of the Malays.
Mac set about improving the trench and forming a small right angle to prevent enfilade and to protect the flank. The sap had been deeper earlier in the day, for the first foot he shovelled out consisted of a sticky muddy mass of blood, soil, ammunition and gear of all sorts. He sifted it carefully for good ammunition and bombs, and formed the rest into a parapet with the assistance of sandbags.
Scarcely has the fire been stilled in one quarter than it breaks out with even greater violence in another, and we are hurried in small reinforcements from point to point. And from the positions on the Tartar Wall, which are now also dusted by a continually growing fire that would sweep our men off in a cloud of sandbags and brick-chips, the enemy's attacks can be best understood.
We held a part of the village cemetery. Some of the broken crosses of the graves still show among the chalk here. To the left of the Roman Road, only a stone's throw from this ruined graveyard, a part of our line is built up with now rotting sandbags full of chalk, so that it looks like a mound of grey rocks.
He saw, dimly, the outline of the German trenches; saw the mounds of earth with the sandbags on their summits, but nothing else. A hundred yards or so is no great distance, but it is difficult to locate a small object in such a space at night. He could not tell how far Waterman had been able to throw the stone, or how near it might be to the German trench.
The defence was not broken or driven out it was killed out; and lunging bayonet or smashing butt caught and finished the few that tried to struggle and claw a way out up the slippery trench-sides. Hard on the heels of the victorious attackers came a swarm of men running and staggering to the trench with filled sandbags over their shoulders.
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