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We stood about on parapets, and walked all over the place, stopping motionless now and again as a star shell went up, and moving on again just in time to hear a bullet or two whizz past behind and go "smack" into a tree in the hedge behind, or "plop" into the mud parados. When the Colonel had finished his tour of inspection he asked me to walk back with him to his headquarters.
At first they sought to discover his location in No Man's Land; but when an officer looking over the parapet through a periscope was struck full in the back of the head with a rifle bullet which passed through his skull and fell to the bottom of the trench they realized that it was beyond the parados rather than the parapet that they should search.
"Digging in the garden" Tommy calls the grave-making. The bodies, wrapped in blankets or waterproof ground-sheets, are lifted over the parados, and carried back a convenient twenty yards or more. The desolation of that garden, choked with weeds and a wild growth of self-sown crops, is indescribable.
No Man's Land The area between the trenches. On your own At liberty. Your time is your own. Out or over there Somewhere in France. Parados The back wall of a trench. Parapet The front wall of a trench. Patrol One or more men who go out in front and prowl in the dark, seeking information of the enemy.
Thus the parados prevents a back-fire of the bullets carried in the shrapnel shell, which otherwise might strike the trench's defenders. "You may stand up here on the fire platform, if you wish," whispered Lieutenant De Verne to Dick in English. "If you do not think it too foolish to expose yourself, you will be able to look over the top of the parapet.
A large, jagged hole had been torn through in our front trench wall by a 300-pound shell, had snuffed out my pal's life in its course, and buried itself in the parados of the trench. There it was, the rear end of it just inside the outside edge of the hind trench wall, and when it exploded it meant death for any living thing within a radius of several yards.
I replied that I recollected having read of the incident, but had forgotten the name of the countess!..." My diary proceeds under date July 11: "Working party in the evening with Sergeant Clews. We drew tools at Potijze dump, proceeded up Strand, which has been badly knocked about by shells, and repaired the parapet and parados of the front line to left and right of Strand. Nobody was hurt.
Dickinson had a party further to my right. It is quite high ground up there, and the front line trench slopes down to the right; over the parados the open ground is much lower, dotted with trees; it looks quite quaint when a flare goes up. We left about 1 a.m. and returned via Strand, Oxford Road, Pagoda Wood and Potijze. Then along Track 4.
"I was wondering whether you'd let me go down and have a look at it?" "Of course," said the girl. "Come on." "Wait a minute," said Dickie, nerving himself to the test. If they didn't remember him they'd think he was mad, and never show him the Castle. Never mind! Now for it! "Did you ever have a tutor called Mr. Parados?" he asked. And again the others looked at him and at each other.
Somehow that trench had to be recaptured to be recaptured before the Germans had converted the parados into an invulnerable parapet and had constructed a nest of machine-guns to sweep with a crossfire the right and left flanks, where our line curved in like a gigantic horse-shoe. Of all this Sergeant Stokes knew as little as is usually given to one platoon to know on a front of eight miles.
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