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Updated: August 24, 2024
"Yes, it rolled into the sap, and I've had it put into the fire-trench. I'm taking it back to blow it up. I think it's a percussion fuse, but it seems fairly safe. I've sent for a stretcher to carry it on." "Let's go and have a look at it." The two officers walked down the sap and back into the trench, and started to investigate with a professional eye the object lying on the fire-step.
I thought of a dead boy I had seen that day or yesterday was it? kneeling on the fire-step of a trench, with his forehead against the parapet as though in prayer... How sweet was the scent of the clover to-night! And how that star twinkled above the low flashes of gun-fire away there in the salient. "They want us to waste your time," said the officer.
Guns flash no longer: the sky is gold and serene; dawn stands there like Victory that will shine, on one of these years when the Kaiser goes the way of the older curses of earth. Dawn, and the men unfix bayonets as they step down from the fire-step and clean their rifles with pull-throughs.
As soon as it lifted, the enemy's infantry made a determined effort to penetrate our line. During the bombardment our fellows had taken shelter in the narrow passage ways behind the traverses, and so lost no time, immediately the barrage lifted, in manning the fire-step.
An English sentry mounted upon the fire-step, and looked out into the darkness beside the Frenchman, and then, before the Frenchman stepped down, patted him on the shoulder, as though he would say: "These trenches all right! we'll look after them!" Then I stumbled into a dug-out. A candle burnt there, and a French officer was taking up his things. He nodded and smiled. "I go," he said.
At some 'posts' there was nothing better to sit on than the muddy 'fire-step' or at best half a duckboard or an old bomb box. Despite continuous efforts to keep one dry place to stand, the floor was several inches deep in water and mud. Movement in any direction, save for a few yards to the flanks if the mud had been cleared away or dammed up, in daylight was impossible. No visitors came by day.
Well, to continue, the other boy to come to No. 10 was a freak; how the devil he ever got in the Army beats me. He was deaf, and when you spoke to him you had to holler; also, he had a cleft palate so you could hardly understand him when he spoke, but he was a good man in the line and when he was on sentry, he was up on the fire-step looking over all the time; only at night of course.
The first man they met was the sentry, who was crouching on the fire-step to avoid the shelling, and from that moment on well, things hummed. The subaltern an excitable youth smiled genially at the dazed Bavarian, who was regarding the sudden invasion of his privacy as if it was a bad dream; and having shot him in the stomach, passed breezily on round the traverse, followed by his surging mob.
"Hush, sir, I beg of you!" The Doctor looked round nervously. "A most peculiar " "I won't hush," roared his irascible senior. "Why should I hush? Some idiot is standing on my feet; and I'm wedged in here like a sardine. Let me speak to him." The General forced his way forward. "Now, you my man, what the devil are you doing? And what's that damned lump of mud on the fire-step?"
And so it came about that three months later Reginald Simpkins lance-corporal and Shorty Bill private were seated on the fire-step of a trench side by side. With one continuous droning roar the shells passed over their heads and crumped into the German lines opposite. The days of peace for the battalion were over; in a quarter of an hour they were going over the top.
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