NIGHT AND DAY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 53, 26 November 1917, Page 6

NIGHT AND DAY

WHAT,THEY SEE ON THE WESTERN

BATTLEFRONT

GREAT ARMY OF NOCTURNAL

WORKERS

(By 2nd Lieutenant J. F. Lloyd.) (Authorised by the. War Officefor publication, per medium of the Royal Colonial Institute.) Even on that portion of the British front which is invariably referred to, briefly ' and comprehensively in . the official communique by the formula;— "On tho rest of the front there is nothing to report," life is not wholly without its interest or its momenta of excitement. By day, looking down from nbove on these parts of the lino it would bo hard to beliove that those brown lines beneath are trenches fined with cowed mon, or that in tho quiet fields and woods bohind aro concealed guns with thoir gun-crews, ready on the instant to belch forth sudden death o:i a terrifying great scale. Ordinary traffic, too. on tho roads immediate behind the trenches is practically non-existent by day. Aeroplanes arid the silent menace of a distant sausage forbid that. Over everything broods the spirit of desolation. There are some places, of course, where the lio of the ground or the prolonged neglect of the Bosclie gunners have made certain routes or areas within bounds. At different points along all roads leading to the trenches are signboards which indioato for the publio benefit the amount of traffio that experience has shown to he within tho margin of safety. They vary from "No vehicles allowed beyond this point in daylight," on the outskirts of the danger area, to tho more explicit warning, "Only single men by day and small parties by night," in places which are under the direct and continual observation of tho Tho entrances .to these "controls'" are generally marked by sandbag barricades, and guarded by sentries, and no man, be he brigadier or sapper, staff-captain or private of the line, can dare disregard his instructions. Bees of the Night. By night the ground, which by day appears to be as barren and uninhabited as a desert island, is transformed, as if by thewaving of a magio wand, into a humming hive of industry as soon as the sun has gone down into the West. The various dumps, which are generally situated at some spot conveniently near the points where the communication trenches emerge into the open, are tho hub of this welter of activity. Transport wagons which havo been parked far behind the Hies during the day rumble up, as soon as> night falls, to their appointed rendezvous, with all the necessaries, of existence for those who live up in the trenches in front, bringing everything that is needed to support life and to destroy it. Ration limbers roll up and are emptied, wheel round amidst nvuch promiscuous profanity, and clatter off down the road. Wagons pass by laden with timber and sandbags destined for an R.E. dump. Working parties and ration parties thread their way in and out of the jumble of traffic, parties or machine-gunners and trench mortar experts making their way to their night emplacements all help to make the traffic more dense. It is a'weird picture when seen silhouetted for a moment in the glow of a star shell. A. straight road, lined with splintered, leafless trees, and scarred with shellholes and foot-deep ruts; a bewildering apparent chaos of marching men and straining mules and horses; 'and, perhaps, now and again a still figure on a stretcher on its way to an aid post; and, as background, the gaping skeleton of some farmhouse, the jagged timbers of its roof outlined crisply against 'the sky, or tho dumb pathos of a_ wayside crucifix, standing erect ind unharmed amidst that wilderness of destruction.

To Each His "Little Bit." Yet every single unit in the struggling throiig has his own little duty to perform. Each man knows where to go and what to do when he gets there. The working parties are bound for the R.E. dump, where the tools, and trench boards, timber and .sandbags required for each party are already llaid out ready, and sappers are waiting to conduct each of them to the place where they have been detailed to work for the night, whether it be draining snd revetting a communication trench or digging a new trench in support or in reserve. Within ten minutes or so or their arrival they will have drawn all the paraphernalia that they require, and will be marching off to then- destination under the guidance ot a sapper. , „ ,' Walk a little further down the road, taldiif good care not to become a living target for an ill-tempered mule, and you will see the various ration partfes loading up under the supervision of their company quartermaster-sergeant, who, amongst other things, is responsible that his company wants for nothing in the way of food or firing while thev are holding the front line. Each company has a little dump of its own, where the rations lie, stowed awav in sandbags and labelled with the number of the sections and platoons te which thev belong. Past this dump the ration'party files slowly, each man takes up his own particular- burden, and the procession disappears m the darkness in the direction of the roarest communication trench, with tbe C.O.M.S. bringing up the rear. For about two hours every night thiß busy scene goes on, lit only by the pale light of the moon or the occasional pale glow of a distant Very light. The wagons and limbers, their business completed, are hut an echo in the distance long before midnight. The ration parties are back with their precious burdens in the front l»ne. -Hie working parties > aro distributed over the countryside. Everything and everyone is beginning to settle down for the nicht's work. By this tinio tha, sun has begun to climb the sky for another day, pint the morning mist has risen from tlie marshes; there is nothing to be seen hut a bare white road running is tar as the eye can see away into the distance, through a country that ;s apparently dead and desolate.