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Updated: May 3, 2025
Well, this kind of a sap was a connecting trench which the Germans were running out from their line so they could get closer to our line in order to start another line of trenches, or else get close up with a lot of men to attack us. A sapper works on a trench of this kind differently to the way he works on an ordinary trench.
Any one could have told him that Sappers and Gunners are perfectly different branches of the Service. But, if you correct the sentence, and substitute Gunner for Sapper, the moral comes just the same. When the earth was sick and the skies were gray, And the woods were rotted with rain, The Dead Man rode through the autumn day To visit his love again. Old Ballad.
On that subject he considered himself an expert, and regularly twice a week he emptied the smoking-room at Rumfold by showing with the aid of small flags what he would have done had he been in charge of the battle of the Somme in 1916. He was only silenced once, and that was by a pessimistic and saturnine Sapper. "Extraordinary," he murmured. "I congratulate you, Sir John.
But when going up to visit the trenches water-bottles are a useless encumbrance, and, with a tired sigh, the wounded Tommy resumed his thirsty way in the direction of the dressing-station. "Cooked, poor devil," remarked the Sapper, as he disappeared. "Pretty nearly finished." "But he'll be his mother's own bright boy again when he gets his nose inside that aid post. We go left here, I think."
The plan you have outlined is exactly in every detail the one which the Commander-in-Chief discussed with me when overlooking the charming little village of Gueudecourt. 'Johnson, he said, 'that is what we will do, and he turned to the Chief of Staff and ordered him to make a note of it." The Sapper paused for a moment to relight his pipe. Then he turned impressively to Sir John.
For in making a flank march round the enemy's position we were disregarding, with justifiable confidence, the first axiom of war. "We were an odd group. There was the sapper guide. He had his steps to count and his compass to look to when his eye was not on a bearing of the stars. And there was the guard of the guide to protect him from the suggestions of doubts as to the correctness of his line.
I want to see about my kit." He got up as he spoke and turned towards the entrance, while at the same moment the Sapper rose too. "I'd like to drop in again, sir, sometimes if I may." He spoke to the shadow where Staunton had been sitting. "Do." Jesson gave a violent start, for the voice came from just behind his shoulder.
Almost before the report had died away, the gun was sponged out, and another inebriated monster departed on its mission. But the Sapper was already some way up the Haymarket. It was not his first view of a trench-mortar firing.
On the bridge stood a keen-eyed, small-featured sapper major. I talked to him. "No!" he informed me, "there's no intention of making a stand here. We've blown up all the canal bridges except one." A muffled boom! "Ah, there goes the last one. All our infantry are over by now." A few German 4·2's were coming over now, mostly on the western side of the railway cutting.
The burrow of the Phalangist is surmounted by a voluminous rubbish-dump, the materials of which are piled in the form of a cylinder as long as the finger. Each of these dumps is a load of refuse and rubbish pushed outward by the little sapper, which shoulders it up from below.
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