MENDING THE WIRE

Grey River Argus, 13 April 1916, Page 3

MENDING THE WIRE

«*» NIGHT LABOUR AT THE FRONT. TRICKY WORK IN A BARBED LABYRINTH. Night labour upon trench and wire defences is one of the most arduous and dangerous incidentals of siefi-e warfare. The following graphic description of the conditions under which the work is carried on is contributed by a soldier to the "Westminster Gazette.": 1 — • "Wiring- is one of the chief concerns of the men actually occupyingthe fire trenches," he says, "for the entanglements are constantly being damaged by shells, bombs, and other means, the wooden support stakes smashed or uprooted, and lengths o{» wire, cut or torn away. Scarcely a\ night passes but there , comes a "call ' for a party t ogo out for work among the wire. Sleep there is at night for no one. A sufficient number of sentries are posted to ensure safety, and the rest are split up into parties feverishly working to accomplish the maximum possible before dawn, when all are again called to their posts, the hours between darkness and light, when it is not safe for a man to look over the parapet, and yet too dark foi him to see in a periscope, being the critical hours so far as guarding against the posibility of an attack is concerned. A NIGHT IN THE WIRE. The first night on the wire is an experience not easily forgotten. As you crawl over your parapet into the blackness of a moonless night, armed with great coils of barbed wire, sharpened stakes and wooden mallets, the gentle thud of a rifle-butt in the earth just by your elbow reminds you that you are now on entirely open ground perhaps joo yards from the German trench. Another thud in the same place, a splash of mud in the face, and you realise there is a fixed rifle putting a shot in the place you have just crawled over. Those fixed rifles are awkward things. They are worked on a stand, and trained by day upon some spot in the enemy's lines that seems likely to give good results, and all night "they pump bullets into the same place at regular fixed intervals. Much use is also made of machine guns in the same way, either firing single shots or sweeping the whole length of the parapet at the height of a man's head, as many a sentry has learnt to his cost. But to continue the wiring. All night long you crawl about with lentg-hs of wire, concealing it in the long grass, dropping loose balls of it here and there, which are anchored to a stake by a yard or more of w r ire, balls, into which a man may put it, tangling it into veritable death-traps! using the last resources of ingenuity to tear and rip the Hun should he attempt to storm our lines, and all the time there is a ceaseless "ping " "thud.'' "thud," all round. Brer Hun feeling for the working party that he knows is out, and every time the mallet falls a perfect hail of shot, ending perhaps with a suppressed groan, for Tommy knows better than to give away the whole party to the mercies of the ever-ready machine gun by a shriek, and there is one more burden lifted gently back into the trench to receive medical attention. TREACHEROUS GAPS. ' Wire is at all times a very tricky thing. 1 once went on an expedition to examine the enemy's wire, and suddenly found myself standing right under the parapet of the trench itself. I had struck a gap in the wiring, and come clean through without seeing it at all. The dickens of a time it took me to find my way out again, too, and not. at all pleasant either, with the knowledge that if Brer Hun didn't see me he ought to be shot for negligence. This must hav^- been somewhat the experience of the German officer who one- very dark night walked clean over our parapet and fell into the trench ! The sentry had such a shock on seeing the apparition that he put his bayonet through him before he could get up, and thus was lost to us a valuable prisoner. Scene. Farm by roadside. Windows blocked with filled sandbags. Sandbags baricade in road. Deep trench dug in circle round farmyard. Evidently in state of defence. Meadow covered with dark shapes, discovered in moonlight to be tabernacles constructed of two waterproof sheets fastened together. Snores from below tabernacles. Company asleep. Time, Midnight. Sounds from cowshed : "Ting ling, ting ling." ."bizz, bizz," Shed door opens, flood of light strrearn on to forms of officers lying in their valises in yard; "Please, sir, message through from headquarters." "Oh,, lor" "What is it?" "Oh!" "Mi". Brown, you're to take fifty men up at once for work on the new trench that runs past Stoneybroke Farm, half a mile behind the line. Fifty shovels and twenty picks."

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