LIFE IN THE TRENCHES

Nelson Evening Mail, 16 November 1916, Page 7

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES

NEW ZEALAN'DER'S AMUSING LETTER. A. young Aneklander now in France gives an du-tei-est-ing sketch, in a letter to his relatives, of the condition* of trench life and wme of th-o work our soldiers are called upon to do. "Eve-m in the trees left standing close to the tiring. liu t and with a, branch or two remaining,'' he says '•the birds have nests ;the spavrows h-svn.iT round our 'hivvics' quite tame, and' twitter away and eat our scrap?. A. few cats ami kittens •live =l-iii the trenches, ceasing rats and mice, H-ind playing with the. fellows. As for tlie rats, they're too tarns and strong for anything, and carry away great lumps of cheese and nubble at them in front of yon. Poppies grow .galore along some of the para'pets and .in 'No Man's Land.' In one part, of the trench is a small cemetery, with roses growing. "I could riot, -help laughing the other day. We gave 'Fritz' a big- 'strafe' one night, aiul blew all his barh-wvrc up, and of course, the next night he got a large crowd- to work and fixed it all up. As soon as owr gunners finished their breakfast that mo ruing they blew it all down... So no wonder the war- is not finished—that sort of thing does not give ether side a flair chance. OFT AMONGST THE WIRES. "Some of ns were out 'wiring' a few nights ago. These -are some of the incicla.niis that ha.pceri~icm sucn expeditions; the man in front of yon fails into a hol»; you trip over him and land in a heap of thistles, and just then a flare, goes u.p and some other fellow flops down flat, chuck-, ing his wMre away, landing it. as a role, on the back of your -neck... And you can't say anything, beca-u.se Fritz will hear you-!. Still, -somehow or other, the party gets out there -more or less complete, and the -work begins. Every time you move wui imak-e a. noise which yen .feel quit* sure can't help .but be heard to Verdun .to the sea. Every clump, of thistles is a German: crouching down : every rat crawling through the grass is a -bati talion of Huns -trying- to surround you. find every ipufT of wind is a gas attack. Every flare your own . side put up is aconfounded nuisance—the 'bally idiots !' Wonder who the denoe put that up? Don't they know we're there? Every fiare Fritz puts rip is a nightmare, a signal for the machine gun to open up on us and a request for tire artillery at the back to send over a couple of whizzbangs and a few shrapnel." .Every time you .put your .entrenching tool handle down you lose it._ and every time you I pick it up it's somebody else's; every ! length of wire you get held of is tangled ; every end is cut off, and every inchis barbed. Thank goodness our instructions are, 'Don't be -too particular- with it,_boys; it does not .matter if it's a.bit loose, you know.' Loose!" 4 AN EXCITING EXPERIENCE. 'But we get on with, it, ; working for all we're worth -while' --it's dark," and keeping more motionless than Madame Tussaud's Waxworks when- it's light. It's like the city of deatli when a. flare goes up; w-e all stay as still as still. Whatever your position' is, it does not do to move; it's best to stay as you are, and make a row like a. p>'ece of grass or tree stump. Fritz.-can't pick you 'up so easily then. You see fellows in all sorts of positions—flying ; down sitting, kneeling, standing, leaning over their wire, or wlftlH their entrenching tools through a, hole im a standard, screwing it in the .ground,- chaps with a length of wire coiled above their heads like a. halo; fellows scratching their •faces and taking 'their hats off, and beating .mosquitoes away with their arms stretched out and l months open. .It's a miost peculiar scene. \-r --.,;;- /■•B'AOK TO SLAFETYr ' .';.'""

"Sometimes when there's not much firing going on we think of Hilair.e Eel-' loc and his statistics, and we think after all he must be right, 'and that Germany must be getting short of men. And just then all the rifles and machineguns seem to open out, and we change pur mind's, and- /wonder how many more reserves she's got. And if our own nia-chine-gnns don't reply we wonder, .why, and when theyi do reply, their bullets cutting the air just a foot or so above our heads 1 , we wonder why they can't keep quiet—'drawing the fire, roundhere !' And then iFritz sweeps r Nb Man's Land' with' a searchlight, and' while we stand still -we take advantage of the light to look carrier says, 'That's all the wire.' We pick up our tools and- bur courage. We get TDack to our own. works to remem'ber that we've iorgotten the password, and the sentry who knows us perfectly well, keeps us dithering, about "up there in full view of the whole Crei-man Army, vv-o clamber in somehow, just about knocking the sentry over, upsetting a box of ammunition, and' setting-the gas alarm going, and grab our rifles and start off for our 'bivvies' thinking: 'Well, that finishes .my turn at wiring for a -few nights 1 you hear the N.C.O-. in charge say, "Those chaps made sucn a good thing of it I think I'M get, tire same'crowd out again to-morrow night.'" And yon just get to sleep when the patrol wakes you up to '.Stand to.'." ■'■',,.