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Updated: May 13, 2025
The jack was useless in the soft mud, it sank like a stone, and as we shoved and cursed we awaited each fresh discharge of the star-shells with increasing apprehension, for we presented an obvious target to the enemy's snipers. On the seat of the car was my despatch-box, and in that box was a little dossier of papers marked "O.H.M.S. German Atrocities. Secret and Confidential."
Being very hungry, I accepted the invitation, and afterwards, over a cup of coffee and cigarettes, I obtained through an interpreter some very interesting information. The night being now well advanced, I bade the Chief adieu, and striking out across the dunes I made for Furnes. The effect of the star-shells sent up by the Germans was very wonderful.
At last a little corner stayed substantial in his hand, and he called out in a loud voice: "Heroes!" But at the word the figures vanished with a wail, sinking into the mud, which was left covered with bubbles iridescent in the light of the star-shells. At this moment one of these, bursting over his head, turned into a large bright moon; and Mr.
An aeroplane appeared overhead so close down that Chester could see it plainly in the light of the star-shells when his sight came back. Aeroplanes were guiding the guns and dropping aerial torpedoes. One landed in the mouth of that other causeway and blew it out of shape, and this was the last thing which, for a long time, Chester remembered.
Then as you drive nearer and nearer, that far-off heat-lightning effect disappears and you can actually see the curve of the star-shells as they mount toward the skies over No Man's Land and fall again as gracefully as a fountain of water. Sometimes you will see them for miles along the front, making night day and lighting up the fields and surrounding hills as though for a great celebration.
A few of the bullets sang nastily close to the twelve huddled men and their canine leader. Once a German, not three yards away, screamed aloud and fell sprawling and kicking, as one such chance bullet found him. Above and behind, sounded the plop of star-shells sent up by the enemy in futile hope of penetrating the viscid fog.
A slight hillock stood between this field and the firing-line where now lively fusillades were being exchanged its profile crowned with a spectral rank of shell-shattered poplars sharply silhouetted against a sky in which star-shells and Verey lights flowered like blooms of hell.
About fifteen yards farther up the trench I found a series of shell-holes threading their way off to the left. By the light of some German star-shells I discerned an officer groping about these holes, and I stumbled over mounds and hollows towards him. "Is this the support line?" I asked, rather foolishly. "Yes," he replied, "but there isn't much room in it."
Ever since nightfall and a brisk skirmish had made practicable an undetected escape through the German lines, he had been in the open, alternately creeping toward the British trenches under cover of darkness and resting in deathlike immobility, as he now rested, while pistol-lights and star-shells flamed overhead, flooding the night with ghastly glare and disclosing in pitiless detail that two-hundred-yard ribbon of earth, littered with indescribable abominations, which set apart the combatants.
Periodically, as the star-shells burst into brilliance overhead, the workers sank down behind a parapet, or, if there was no time, stood rigid the one thing to avoid upon these occasions is movement of any kind and gave the snipers a chance. It was not pleasant, but it was duty; and the word duty has become a mighty force in "K " these days.
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