NIGHTS IN NO MAN'S LAND

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2729, 25 March 1916, Page 3

NIGHTS IN NO MAN'S LAND

DIGGING /*N ADVANCE TRENCH

' (By Augustus Muir id. the London "Daily Mail!-') It was the brigade-major who Began it. I reraember the morning distinctly. He. came round the traverse with _a periscope in his hand, a Staff captain at his, heels, aiid made an exhaustive survoy of the ground ill front. ;. "Bad field of fire," . he . muttered. "The. Boschos must bo four, hundred yards away just here,- hut there's ground in front we can't see—dead ground. Bad field of fire altogether." "Rotten," agreed the Staff captain. "That hollow could hide a couple of companies of the Bosches in case of an attack. Now if wo put an advance treholi out— —"

"Just what I was going to say," said the brigade-major. "Just what I've brought you here to see. We'll mention it to the brigadier this'afternoon."

In the afternoon tho brigadier came down the trench.

"Ex-actly,";said the brigadier, in his nest, precise accents. "Ex-actly. Ho turned io : the 0.0. of our battalion. v 'What,3o you think of it, colonel!"' "Quito agree," said the colonel. And that was all that was said : thus can a few short sentences set a vast machinery at work! The-neat little brigadier s "Ex-actly" was "like- pressing the button which controlled an immense restrained activity. . ; .

■ Saft'sfiod, the group of officers moved down the trenoh, leaving behind them tho disturbing knowledge that something was about to happen. . That evening wo got our orders, and ffy'tfhe morning Tommy knew what the making of an advance trench meant. . Th® "Covering Party." 'A' "covering party" is picked. They are put trader tho command of an outstanding N.C.0.--a man who has been tried in the fire of achievement and has been found reliant. Their duties are . hazardous and vital. On them devolves the strain of providing a protective screen between the Bosches and our' working_party, which is about to go cut. They must lie in the open, watohing. waiting, alert, untiring. Should they chance to run into, a Hun patrol, their work must be short, sharp, and to the point. There can be no dallying when it is one's own skin—or that of Fritz. And they must use the bayonet only; for to fire would-be but to disoloso thoir locality to a dozen enemy machine-guns waiting to belch forth lead.

i When the hour appointed draws near, these picked men get ready.' They stand waiting, cigarette in mouth, for their orders to move. There are the crisp thudding of a Maxim down the first line, 'an occasional quick crackle of riflo fire, and the angry roar of bursting shrapnel in the distance. A subaltern appeara in the darkness. "Patrol ready, corporal?" The corporal signifies assent; cigarettes are put out; bayonetß are fised; equipments buckled; and with a last "Cheer-hol" the covering party clamber over the parapot of the trench and are gone.

Ten or fifteen minutes later a dark figure crawls back, appears for a swift moment against the night sky, and drops with a spatter of mud into the trench. It is the officer. Ho reports to the company captain that he has "placed" the patrol; that all is ready for the working party. The x eternal order to "Carry on" is given. The next moment a long string of men "scramble from the cloggy depths of the trench and follow their officer into the land of unexplored mysteries ; the Dead Country; that grey desolation, fraught with unimagined [horrors, where the dead are lying; that Long Road which runs from the plashing sea near Dunkirk on th® west to the bas9 of the white gleaming peaks, of "the Alpine ridges to the east—for all the world like a vast, grim, black ribbon flung carelessly across Europe. The Csssritlal' Sandbag. Every man bears a sandbag; they are the essence of the whole business. Without them 1 the earlier stages in the making of an advance trench could no more be accomplished than could the completion. The company captain confers with a subaltern; crouching in the open, he gives whispered counsel. "Start here with the trench and mak" for the outline of that tree; I'll get Kennedy to work towards you with his platoon. You can touch'in with each other." "Right," says the subaltern as his company captain glides out of earshot. "Now then, first man, hand me your sajidbaig." The subaltern selects his spot and places th» sandbag gn it. "Hand your bags along the line—pass back the order.'' And so the sandbags travel along the human chain 1 which stretches back to , the firing line and beyond it to a clay-pit, where a pack of perspiring Tommies are grovelling in the earth and filling the little squat squares of stitched canvas as if their lives depended on their : energy. But neither the sweating fellows who fill them nor the subaltern who lays them amid the zipping bullets have "time to ponder unique romance residing in these little grev sandbags, fashioned perchance by some woman's hande in the tranquil firoliirht 'of a quiet hearth. Some dav—if the war spares him—some poet will sing tho deathless lyric of sandhatrs and other mundane things of trench life, but the time is not yet. , . Moving towards his left the subaltern plots out tho future trench with its traverses and cover. Ho needs tho eyo sf it cat for this job bocause where the ground it unsuitable the trench must avoid it and swerve back or forward. Half'an hour's work and his colleague heaves in sight. "I'll touch in with you now," says the subaltern; they place the lost, few sandbags; and the long line, laid unerringly in the darkness, meets in tho centre. The advance trenoh is mapped out. . Finished, * It is with the first clink of pick and shovel that tho real danger begins. Aa scon as the Bosches realise that out in front something ia dome; they get bu6y, and ten rounds rapid become too frequent for health. Digging—feverish digging—is the order of tho night. Your aims are aching, your head is splitting, you want to lie down and Test for over; but, urged by the knowledge that tliey must occupy tho trench in three days, tho men settle down to it with bracod sinews. A flare goes up into the. night, making a lurid green scar in tiio sky and falling twenty yards away. Picks and shovels are dropped like hot metal, and Platoon Fifteen lies hugging tho wot earth, barely daring to twitch an eyelid. As soon as tlio flare burns out they are at it again liko clustering bees. The night wears on. Tho trench grows deeper. With "Stand to !" an hour before dawn comes tho order to retiro. The men filo back, 'thanking their stars that they have even a trench to come to—after all, there is no place liko home. Picks and shovels are stored, Tho officer creeps out and recalls the patrol.

Dawn comes, and with it repose and respite, till night relentlessly drags them forth again to fac9 tho machinepuns that bavo boon laid during the day on the fresh sandbags Casualties? These are but little incidents in the great adventure. Two nights pass and (often a quick cry lias told someone's mates that ho is passing from them. Casualties? The subaltern puts a black Btroko against each nnn his platoon roll, but would fain hold back his band from adding up the numbor.

Ao dawn breaks on the third day tho subaltern inspects his work. Tho advance trench, is finished.: there are a

firing-step, loopholes, cover; and a communication trench lias been out out, But will it do ? Will the brigadier bo satisfied? In tho forenoon tho brigadier himself comes round. "An excellent field of firo," he says. "How many men have you lost?" ... And such is the epic of the advance trenoh.