My Second Year of the War

re to live-Their variety-The ambulance line-The refuse from the hopper of battle-Resting in the battle line-Reminisce

Where from Thiepval to Gommecourt the men who had expected to be organizing new trenches were back in their old ones and the gunners who had hoped to move their guns forward were in the same posit

ations; new ammunition dumps were being located; military police were adapting traffic regulations to the new situation. Old trenches had been filled up to give trucks and guns passageway. In every face was the shining desir

t hours previously a company would have drawn the fire of half a dozen German batteries? Was it dream or reality that you were walking about in the first-line German trenches? So long had you been used to stationary warfare, with your s

sandbags, back of the first British line near Carnoy was a focus of communication trenches and the magnet to the men hastening from bullet-swept, shell-swept spaces to security. The hot breath of the firing-line had scorched them and cast them out and th

iforms whitened by chalk dust. Hunger had weakened the stamina of many of them in the days when the preliminary British bombardment had shut them off from supplies; but none looked as if he were really underfed. I neve

live was very human in the way that hands shot up if a sharp word were spoken to them by an officer. They were wholly lacking in military dignity as they filed by; but it returned as by a magic touch when a non-commissioned officer was bidden to take charge of a batch and march them to an inclosure. Then, in answer to the command shoulders squared, heels rapped together, and

in our exhibit!" sa

formed in civil life, professional men with spectacles fastened to their ears by cords and fat men

ton, who winced with pain and turned and gave the German a punch in very human fashion with his free arm. Another German with his slit trousers' leg flapping around a bandage was leaning on the arm of a Briton whose other arm was in a sling. A giant Prussian bore a spectacled comrade pickaback. Germ

First dressings put on by the man himself or by a comrade in the firing-line were removed and fresh dressings substituted. Ambulance after ambulance ran up, the litt

ne only two thousand yards away. The seriously wounded were separated from the lightly wounded, who must not expect to ride but must go farther on foot. The shell-mauled

ers unless to carry litters and no use at all for wounded; and it was only a by-produc

oad in the former No Man's Land which for nearly two years had had no life except the patrols at night. The bodies of those who fell on such nocturnal scouting expedit

ring-line. The men had stripped off their coats; they were washing and making tea and sprawling in the sunshine, these victors

lls into you," I sugge

p or relaxation after two sleepless nights under fire. "The Germans haven't any aeroplanes up to enable them to see us and no sau

eing the only regular. There were still enough regulars left to pro

ey went in without any faltering and we had a stiffish bit of t

he was one to them; and they had won. That was the thing, victory, though they regarded it as a matter of course, which gave them a glow warmer than the sunlight as they lay at ease on the grass.

before we got to the trench," said one soldier. "He ha

got him with a bomb. I did for the

I thought that it would get

Mostly, they did not rehearse their experiences. Their brains had had emotion enough; their bodies asked for rest. They lay silently enjoying the fact o

d. The infantry which took the position met no fire in front, but had an enfilade at one point from a machine gun. Where the dead lay told exactly the breadth of its sweep through which the charge had unfalteringly passed; and this was only a first objectiv

were the last word in German provision against attack. The making of dugouts is standardized like everything else in this war. There is the same angle of entrance, the same flight of steps to that underground refuge, in keeping with the established pattern. Depth, capacity and comfort are the result of local initiative and industry. The

e. Some whence came foul odors were closed by the British as the simplest form of burial for the dead within who had waited for bombs to be thrown before surrendering

"We can't leave you there to come out and fire into our backs

mered chalk mixed with flesh and fragments of clothing, the thing growing nauseatingly horrible and your wonder increasing as to how gunfire had accomplished the destru

blood. Trench mortars poked their half-filled muzzles out of the toppled trench walls. Bundles of rocket flares, empty ammunition boxes, steel helmets crushed in by shell-fragments, gasbags, eye-protectors against lachrymatory shells, spades, water bottles, unused rifle grenad

dy Highland regiment which would not halt for a machine gun were being brought in and laid in a German communication trench which had only to be closed to make a common grave, each identification disk being kept as a record of where

fields and in the communication trenches lay green figures. Over that open space they were scattered green dots; again, where they had run for cover to a wood's edge, they lay thick as they had dropped under the fire of a machine gun which the British had brought into action.

s of that action; but could they have seen the broad belts of No Man's Land with only an occasional prostrate figure it would have had the reassurance that another time they might have easier going. Wherever the Germans had brought a machine gun into action the results of it

ole. The small number of shell-craters attested that no such artillery curtains of fire had been concentrated here a

ead and the litter behind the old German first line-this was the fringe of the action. Beyon