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Updated: May 3, 2025
Round about, over all this ground below Notre Dame de Lorette and the fields round Souchez, the French had fought ferociously, burrowing below earth at the Labyrinth sapping, mining, gaining a network of trenches, an isolated house, a huddle of ruins, a German sap-head, by frequent rushes and the frenzy of those who fight vith their teeth and hands, flinging themselves on the bodies of their enemy, below ground in the darkness, or above ground between ditches and sand-bags.
Work on the sap-head had been commenced on what the Captain of the Sappers called 'a beautiful night, and what anyone else outside a lunatic asylum would have described with the strongest adjectives available in exactly the opposite sense.
One branch merely leads into a ditch full of water, used in drier weather as a means of communication; another ends abruptly in a cul-de-sac, probably an abandoned sap-head; the third winds on, leading into galleries and passages further forward.
Too many accompanied the flag, but nearer approach being severely discouraged they retired speedily again into the scrub. A few minutes later, the flag returned, this time direct towards the sap-head, and now the Colonel, armed with German and Turkish vocabularies, was there to welcome it. They halted about twenty yards away, and a rather fruitless conversation followed.
Trenches are trenches, and the main specialty of these in the Argonne is that they are nearer to the enemy. In fact there are places where they interlock, and where the advanced posts lie cheek by jowl with a good steel plate to cover both cheek and jowl. We were brought to a sap-head where the Germans were at the other side of a narrow forest road.
The afternoon drowsed slowly past, a spell of sapping at the sap-head occasionally breaking the monotony. With sundown, both sides revived for the evening activity, a meal, and preparations for the night. The Turks, since their heavy but futile attacks of two nights previous, had not returned into that placidity which betokened cessation of evil intentions.
Oh! the Big Ape especially, how I hated him! When from the height of his desk these words fell upon my ear: "You will do a hundred lines; I mean you, you little sap-head!" I could have flown at his face like an enraged cat.
A staff captain came out with a report, which he read: "The sound of picks has been heard close to our sap-head. The enemy will probably explode their mine in a few hours." "That's the place I was telling you about," said the general. "It's well worth a visit... But you must make up your mind to get your feet wet."
A sentry in the fire trench will always find his attention distracted to a certain degree, especially when he is 500 yards from the enemy, but put him in a sap-head with only a few yards of wire to protect him, and the acuteness of his vision and hearing will be marvellously increased.
While he waited an answer, a message came from the Brigade saying that the artillery had reported heavy German shelling on a sap-head, and demanding to know what, where, and why was the sap-head referred to. While the Colonel was puzzling over this mysterious message and vainly trying to recall any sap-head within his sector of line, the regimental Padre came into the dug-out.
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