Letters from FranceBean, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow)
History
Letters from France
Bean, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English
For this reason you would almost say that the German line in this
country was asleep compared with the line we used to know. A hundred and
fifty yards of green grass, with the skeleton that was once some old hay
wagon up-ended in the middle of it, and sky-blue water showing through
the grass blades in the depressions; a brown mud wall straggling along
the other side of the green--more or less parallel to your breastwork,
with white sandbags crowning it like an irregular coping; the
inevitable stumpy stakes and masses of rusted barbed wire in front. You
might watch it for an hour and the only sign of life you would see would
be a blue whiff of smoke from some black tin chimney stuck up behind it.
If you fire at the chimney probably it will be taken down. The other
day, chancing to look into a periscope, I happened for a moment to see
the top of a dark object moving along half hidden by the opposing
parapet. Some earth was being thrown up over the breastwork just there,
and probably the man had to step round the work which was going on. It
was the first and only time I have seen a German in his own lines.
The German here really snipes much more with his field gun than with his
rifle. He does use his rifle, too, and is a good shot, but slow. A spout
of dust on the parapet--and a periscope has been shattered in the
observer's hand within a few yards of us. But it is generally the German
field gun that does his real sniping for him, shooting at any small body
of men behind the lines. Half a dozen are quite enough to make a target,
if he sees them.
The Turks used to snipe us at times with their field guns and mountain
guns, but generally at certain fixed places--down near the mouth of the
Aghyl Dere, for example. The German snipes with them more generally.
There is no place that I have visited which can compare for perpetual
"unhealthiness" to Anzac Beach, but it is quite possible that such
places do exist.
The German gives you the impression of being a keener observer than the
Turk. The hills and trees behind his lines are really within view of you
over miles of your own country, though you scarcely realise it at first,
and they are full of eyes. Also every fine day brings out his balloons
like a crop of fat grubs--and also our own. In Gallipoli our ships had
the only balloons--the Turks had all the hill-tops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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