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I then put the shells, one on either side, and connected them with a fine trip-wire tied to each ring. I hurried from the spot as though the pestilence were after me, and got back safely to the surprise of my brother officers who very consolingly said that they all expected I would blow myself up.
"We might," remarked Tomkins at length, after a period of profound thought, "'ave a trip-wire, wot would ring a gong." "That's it that's it! 'Pon my word, you're a doocid clever fellow, Thomson, doocid clever fellow what?" Percy became enthusiastic. "Ring the gong where the fellah is who lets down the door. He lets down the door, and we bag the Hun. Dam good idea!"
You balance your test-tube in the hollow of a bamboo stick and fill the top knot of the stick with the chlorate of potash; then you plant your sticks, not too securely, outside your barbed-wire entanglements, and string them together with a trip-wire. As for the patrolling Hun who bumps against that trip-wire, it were better for him that a millstone were hung round his neck.
In places this web or barrier was supplemented with trip-wire, or wire placed just above the ground, so that the artillery observing officers might not see it and so not cause it to be destroyed. This trip-wire was as difficult to cross as the wire of the entanglements. The spikes were so placed in the ground that about one foot of spike projected.
The scheme was that our men should catch their feet in the trip-wire, fall on the spikes, and be transfixed. In places, in front of the front line in the midst of his wire, sometimes even in front of the wire, the enemy had carefully hidden snipers and machine-gun posts.
That's the ticket, sir," he continued, with gathering emphasis as he noted the impression he was causing. "Lumme a trip-wire: it might break, or the gong mightn't ring, or the blighter mightn't 'ear it. Wiv china every step he took 'e'd smash anuvver pot. Drahn a rum jar 'e would. But a trip-wire!" He spat impartially and resumed his tune. "By Jove, that's a splendid idea!"
They had to get through a ditch full of water to their necks, then some trip-wire, then a knee-deep entanglement, then a ditch full of rusty wire, then some "French" coils of barbed wire, then more wire knee-deep, with trip-wire after that. Moreover, the enemy's artillery fire was heavy.
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