We struck our tents this afternoon and then the rain came down. It
is eight o’clock now and the rain is still steadily driving down. I
suppose you imagine that you can picture the discomfort, but I bet
you can’t. As a help, however, I will give you a few details. We
have had to erect the tent in the pouring rain, which means that the
floor-boards are soaked, and each one has to find a little dry oasis
for himself, and there aren’t many dry places left when nine fellows
have to be crowded in. Now the tent-cloth is soaked through and little
streams of water are trickling across the floor, while miniature
cascades are dancing merrily down the walls: _Lance-Corpl. J. W. James,
Royal Fusiliers_.
Quagmires and “Mug Racks”
A German device that is new to me is the making of quagmires in front
of the trenches, usually by digging extra trenches a few hundred feet
from the real ones, throwing in the loose clay, and then flooding
them so that you get a ditch of liquid mud. One day a French infantry
detachment was advancing finely against the German position until they
stumbled into one of these bogs, and just as they were stuck fast they
were treated to a hail of fire. Barbed-wire entanglements are ten times
worse than what we found in South Africa. Usually they are hidden away
in the long grass, and you don’t see them until they catch you in the
legs and bring you down. However, we’re getting up to the dodge. Now we
call the wires “mug racks,” because it’s only the “mugs” who get caught
in them: _A Private of a Scots Regiment_.