Medicine, Military; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Canadian
"All right; crawl in here, and no funny
tricks or we'll fill ye full o' lead." At the
point of the bayonet he and his corporal
crawled over the parapet. They found
themselves in the enlarged end of a sap that was
being used as a listening post. In the
darkness they could dimly see that they were
surrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets.
"What's yer name?" hissed the voice, for
out there no one is anxious to attract a hand
grenade from the enemy on the other side of
the line.
"Lieutenant Weston."
"An' yours?" to the corporal.
"Corporal Easton."
"Weston--Easton; that's too damn thin.
Now you fellows march ahead of us to
Headquarters, an' if ye so much as turn yer head
we'll put so many holes through ye, ye'll look
like a sieve. Quick march!" And they
plowed through the deep mud of the trenches
till they were well back, then they came out
and proceeded overland to H.Q.--headquarters.
Here, after a few sharp questions, a little
telephoning, and some hearty laughter, they
were given a runner to show them the shortest
route back to their own battalion.
Trench warfare as it has been carried on
during this great war is different from the
warfare of the past. Here we had--and have
at the time of writing--on the western front
alone, a fighting line five hundred miles long,
with millions of the soldiers of the Allies
occupying trenches, dugouts, huts, tents, and
billets, on one side of the line, and the millions of
the enemy in the same position on the other.
For months at a time there is no move in either
direction.
Trenches are merely long, irregular ditches,
usually, though not always, deep enough to
hide a man from the enemy. Occasionally
they are so shallow that the soldier must travel
on his stomach, during which time any part of
his anatomy which has too prominent a curve
may be exposed to the fire of the enemy. Of
course this all depends on the architectural
configuration of the traveler. Except trenches
far in the rear, they are always zigzag, being
no more than ten to twenty feet in a straight
line, to prevent any shell's doing too much
damage. The front trench is called the firing
line; the next one, fifty yards or so behind, but
running parallel, is a support trench; and other
support trenches exist back to about 1000
yards.
Communicating trenches run from front to
rear, crossing the support trenches. Here and
there a communicating trench runs right back
out of the danger zone, and these long trenches
are at times divided into "in" trenches, and
"out" trenches. Shorter communicating
trenches run from support to firing lines.
These different trenches give the ground, from
above, the appearance of an irregular checker
board.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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