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Updated: June 26, 2025
Beyond the barbed wire in the open field the wheat which some farmer sowed before positions were established in this area is now in head, rippling with the breeze, making a golden sea up to the wall of sandbags which is the enemy's line. It was late June at its loveliest; no signs of war except the sound of our guns some distance away and an occasional sniper's bullet.
There in several places, as at La Boisselle and on the Beaucourt spur, our men have built up the parapet of our old front line by thousands of sandbags till it is a hill-top or cairn from which they could see beyond.
Away to the left, where the artillery have been busy all day, the shelling slackens as the light fades, and the rifle shots grow more and more frequent. Presently the extra sentries are posted one man in every three the disgusted working parties are told off to their work of filling sandbags or improving the communication trenches, and the long, trying night begins.
The deep part, which is like a very deep, broad, natural trench, was known to our men as the Sunken Road. The banks of this sunken part are perpendicular. Until recently, they were grown over with a scrub of dwarf beech, ash, and sturdy saplings, now mostly razed by fire. In the road itself our men built up walls of sandbags to limit the effects of enemy shell fire.
I tell you, Shorty, I don't want to be killed; I " His voice died away, and he looked shamefacedly at the sandbags in front of him. "No more don't I, son; no more don't I. An' no more don't your men your six boys you are responsible for. They're your men, that little bunch: they're looking to you, they're relying on you." He put his hand on the other's knee.
The first to fall was the Goletta, until then reckoned impregnable, and it fell, not by any fault of its defenders, who did all that they could and should have done, but because experiment proved how easily entrenchments could be made in the desert sand there; for water used to be found at two palms depth, while the Turks found none at two yards; and so by means of a quantity of sandbags they raised their works so high that they commanded the walls of the fort, sweeping them as if from a cavalier, so that no one was able to make a stand or maintain the defence.
But the infantry had clung throughout the day to the ruins, had beaten off several strong counter-attacks, and in the intervals had done what they could to dig themselves more securely in and re-pile some heaps of sandbags from the shattered parapet on the trench's new front.
The Labyrinth was a perfect maze of trenches, built by the Germans, and taken from them by the French, at the time of the British attack at Loos. The gun crew we relieved was carried out in sandbags, having been blown to pieces by a premature shell that is, a shell exploding in the gun. This made us pretty nervous, and we didn't fire any more till all our stock of ammunition had been inspected.
We heard the men make no complaints except that at times the life was a little "monotonous"! One man told me that he was once in a trench that was occupied at the same time by the French and the Germans. There was nothing between them but sandbags and a thick wall of clay, and day and night the French watched that wall. One day a slight scratching was heard.
Masses of metal shot in all directions, leaving a trail of sparks behind them; bits of shell shrieked past my head and buried themselves in the walls and sandbags. One large missile fell in an open space about forty feet on my left, and exploded with a deafening, ear-splitting crash. At the same moment another exploded directly in front of me. Instinctively I ducked my head.
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