One cannot say that one time in the trenches is any more tense than
another. One cannot take any one particular hour and call it, in
modern nonsensical talk, “typical hour in the trenches.” The routine
of the trenches has gone on too long for that. The tensest hour ought
to be half an hour before dawn, the hour when attacks are expected and
men stand to. It is an old convention of war that that is the
dangerous hour, the hour when defenders are weakest and attack most to
be feared. For darkness favours the attackers then as night favours
the lion, and then dawn comes and they can hold their gains in the
light. Therefore in every trench in every war the garrison is prepared
in that menacing hour, watching in greater numbers than they do the
whole night through. As the first lark lifts from meadows they stand
there in the dark. Whenever there is any war in any part of the world
you may be sure that at that hour men crowd to their parapets: when
sleep is deepest in cities they are watching there.
When the dawn shimmers a little, and a grey light comes, and widens,
and all of a sudden figures become distinct, and the hour of the
attack that is always expected is gone, then perhaps some faint
feeling of gladness stirs the newest of the recruits; but chiefly the
hour passes like all the other hours there, an unnoticed fragment of
the long, long routine that is taken with resignation mingled with
jokes.
Dawn comes shy with a wind scarce felt, dawn faint and strangely
perceptible, feeble and faint in the east while men still watch the
darkness. When did the darkness go? When did the dawn grow golden? It
happened as in a moment, a moment you did not see. 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. Not all together, but section by section, for it would
not do for a whole company to be caught cleaning their rifles at dawn,
or at any other time.
They rub off the mud or the rain that has come at night on their
rifles, they detach the magazine and see that its spring is working,
they take out the breechblock and oil it, and put back everything
clean: and another night is gone; it is one day nearer victory.