The day's work in trenches begins about nine o'clock the night
before. Darkness having fallen, various parties steal out into the
No-Man's-Land beyond the parapet. There are numerous things to be done.
The barbed wire has been broken up by shrapnel, and must be repaired.
The whole position in front of the wire must be patrolled, to prevent
the enemy from creeping forward in the dark. The corn has grown to
an uncomfortable height in places, so a fatigue party is told off to
cut it--surely the strangest species of harvesting that the annals of
agriculture can record. On the left front the muffled clinking of picks
and shovels announces that a "sap" is in course of construction: those
incorrigible night-birds, the Royal Engineers, are making it for the
machine-gunners, who in the fullness of time will convey their voluble
weapon to its forward extremity, and "loose off a belt or two" in the
direction of a rather dangerous hollow midway between the trenches,
from which of late mysterious sounds of digging and guttural talking
have been detected by the officer who lies in the listening-post, in
front of our barbed-wire entanglement, drawing secrets from the bowels
of the earth by means of a microphone.
Behind the firing trench even greater activity prevails. Damage done to
the parapet by shell fire is being repaired. Positions and emplacements
are being constantly improved, communication trenches widened or made
more secure. Down these trenches fatigue parties are filing, to draw
rations and water and ammunition from the limbered wagons which are
waiting in the shadow of a wood, perhaps a mile back. It is at this
hour, too, that the wounded, who have been lying pathetically cheerful
and patient in the dressing-station in the reserve trench, are smuggled
to the Field Ambulance--probably to find themselves safe in a London
hospital within twenty-four hours. Lastly, under the kindly cloak of
night, we bury our dead.
Meanwhile, within various stifling dugouts, in the firing trench or
support trench, overheated company commanders are dictating reports
or filling in returns. (Even now the Round Game Department is not
entirely shaken off.) There is the casualty return, and a report on
the doings of the enemy, and another report of one's own doings, and a
report on the direction of the wind, and so on. Then there are various
indents to fill up--scrawled on a wobbly writing-block with a blunt
indelible pencil by the light of a guttering candle--for ammunition,
and sandbags, and revetting material.
All this literature has to be sent to Battalion Headquarters by one
A.M., either by orderly or telephone. There it is collated
and condensed, and forwarded to the Brigade, which submits it to the
same process and sends it on, to be served up piping hot and easily
digestible at the breakfast-table of the Division, five miles away, at
eight o'clock.