What words can fitly describe the patience, courage and endurance of these workers, perpetually overlooked by the enemy, toiling to exhaustion under the fire of machine-guns trained on our lines, exposed to death-dealing bombs, a single one of which would sometimes nullify the efforts of a whole night or burst like a thunder-clap in the midst of a group of men, scattering death and horrible wounds? No suffering, however, could break their indomitable will. Admirable they were and are. Nothing could be more touching than the self-sacrificing spirit which animated these heroes. They had not even the satisfaction of being able to return blow for blow, to increase their keenness and energy. On the contrary, they knew that death threatened them, not while rifle in hand and drunk with the madness of the fray, but while ingloriously wielding a common trenching-tool. This dreadful life lasted for weeks and months on end. Think of the exhaustion of it, when the same men had to work every night, then take their turn on guard in the trenches without any chance of getting a really refreshing sleep! Later on, the bringing of the regiments up to full strength and the advanced condition of the work fortunately made it possible to arrange a judicious rotation of duty. Nevertheless, our men have never been able to consider their job quite done, since on the Belgian front one has constantly to reconstruct, repair, even entirely rebuild, fortifications damaged by the enemy's fire or by water--that second foe which is often more destructive than the first. The best means of arriving at a due appreciation of the perseverance shown by the Belgian troops and of the time required for the completion of their task, is a numerical statement of the work actually achieved. We may note that the whole front organised by the Belgian Army extends for about 31 kilometres (19¼ miles), as measured along the front line of trenches; also, that this system of continuous or discontinuous positions has a great depth, and that each position is made up of several lines, one behind the other, their number varying according to tactical requirements or topographical conditions. Without fear of being accused of exaggeration, we may, therefore, reckon the total length of the trenches which the Belgian Army had to make, as 10 to 15 times that of the front itself. To this we must add the many kilometres of communication trenches which allow the men to move from one line to another without being seen and to a certain extent without being hit by the enemy. At a low estimate the total work amounts to at least 400 kilometres of earthworks[B]--the distance, as the crow flies, from Paris to Cologne or from Paris to Strassburg, or half as much again as that from Ostend to Arlon, the longest stretch which can be measured in Belgium.