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Fortunately for the regiment, most of the daylight hours during the short stay in the present bivouac were spent away on working-parties or in support to some section of the front line. They usually returned in the evening to find fresh holes in their oil-sheets and shrapnel pellets on their floors. Still, they often had a good night's sleep, and always a fine bathe in the morning.
Every tree and stump covered a sharp-shooter, ready to pick off any luckless marine who showed his head above-decks, and entirely preventing the working-parties from removing obstructions. This was speedily arranged, our skirmishers capturing three prisoners.
They studied to dissemble with their lips and to imitate the vocabulary of nature. They grew more and more chary of human speech, and listening posts talked with the trenches by pulls on a fishing-reel. They never sheathed their claws, and working-parties wore their equipment as though it were the integument of nature. Bayonets were never unfixed unless the moon were very bright.
Alongside the roads other gangs laid watermains connected directly with Port Said, for it soon became utterly impossible to bring an adequate daily supply of water by boat. At certain points stand-pipes were erected so that working-parties and other troops could fill their water-bottles without having to go far to do so; in the hot weather every extra yard tells.
Later they trained their machine guns on German working-parties and swept crossroads on which supplies came up, and the Canadian sniper, in one shell-hole or another, lay for hours in sulky patience, and at last got his man... They had to pay for all this, at Maple Copse, in June of '15, as I shall tell.
Also that the grenades in the trenches and all bomb stores were properly stored and cleaned. I had also to see that sufficient rifle-grenades were fired at night to harass the enemy's working-parties, and that our bombing-posts were properly manned. During our stay at Bruloose I had nearly 2000 grenades taken out of the trenches and replaced by new ones; this was hard work for the transport.
Every tree and stump covered a sharp-shooter, ready to pick off any luckless marine who showed his head above-decks, and entirely preventing the working-parties from removing obstructions. This was speedily arranged, our skirmishers capturing three prisoners.
At length, fever and ague began to thin the ranks of the gold-seekers; we saw the working-parties around us diminish day by day, and graves dug in the shadows of the low coppice.
Our business in Gizhiga was finally adjusted and settled; our working-parties were all called in; and we were just about to sail in the bark Onward for Okhotsk, when we were suddenly confronted by the deadliest peril that we had encountered in more than two years of arctic experience.
The Brigade observers held a post in the old Flers Line, from which good observation was obtained on the ground between Loupart Wood and Grevillers. It was not difficult to get the heavy gunners to fire on German working-parties that were spotted by the observers; and several parties were duly dispersed by our shells.
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