LAND AND WATER 
February 13, 1915. 
ON TRENCHES AND TRENCH WORK; 
A NOVEL FORM OF TRENCH DREDGER FOR DRAINAGE. 
By COL. F. N. MAUDE, G.B. (late R.E.). 
IT is interesting to notice how the trenches in Flanders 
and eyerything connected with them are gradually 
working their way through a cycle of change back to 
the types of thirty years ago. 
We began the campaign with ideas taken from the 
conditions of the South African campaign, and as it 
happened the Germans also had closely copied our types. 
Generally, they were all cut exceedingly steep and narrow, 
wilh the parapets kept down as low as possible, so as to afford 
the smallest possible target to the enemy's artillery, and as 
long as the ground was suitable and the weather dry, they 
answered their purpose sufficiently well — that is, giving good 
cover to the men from the splinters thrown backward by high 
explosive shells. 
Moreover, as they had generally to be laid out in the dark, 
no one could be certain where their prolongations might rest 
when daylight came; hence the numerous traverses we were 
accustomed to make in South Africa came in handy. 
But it is open to question whether they saved us as much 
as we thought they did, for almost from the first the Germans 
took to locating them by aeroplanes from above, and clearly 
the broader belt of freshly-turned earth made when the exca- 
vated soil was thrown out to form parapets, both to the front 
and rear, was far more easily visible from above than the 
parapet in front, and the trench only, would have been. 
If, for instance, a " Taube " could detect the broader 
line at, say, 5,000 ft., it would have had to come down to 
3,000 ft. to see the smaller mark, and its risks would have 
increased in almost a double ratio as the height diminished. 
But a Taube which found and signalled the range would cost 
us far more in men than we hoped to save through the protec- 
tion afforded by the parapet at the back. 
The superiority of the German siege artillery on the 
Aisne, and at first in Flanders, simply compelled us to fight 
our way in so close to the enemy that he could no longer use 
artillery fire, least of all big, high explosive shells, for 
fear of hitting his own trenches, and thus we came back to a 
condition of affairs in which the inconspicuousness of the front 
parapet hardly mattered. At fifty yards you can see a 12 in. 
parapet just as well as a 3 ft. one. 
We did not exactly tumble to this obvious point for the 
first few weeks, and meanwhile the rains descended and the 
floods came, and the steep-sidod trenches collapsed; the subsoil 
water rose up through the bottom, and I imagine both our 
men and the Germans have had about as hard a time during 
th« last few months as has ever been recorded in history. 
to me as quite a new idea the phrase I so often heard from mj 
old Crimean instructors, " Men don't mind so much the chance 
of being killed; what they cannot endure is the certainty oj 
having to stand knee-deep in slush and ice." And Judging 
from photographs I have seen, we are rapidly coming back to 
the old Crimean type of trench, viz., on© that is broad enougU 
for convenience of movement, and sloped sufficiently for men 
to attack out of it; for the power of counter-attack is the most 
vital feature of all to be preserved for the sake of the moral 
of the troops. 
Nor is there sufficient reason why we should cling to a flat 
target any longer now that the artillery superiority has passed 
BO markedly over to our side. We now not only outnumberl 
our enemy in guns of all calibres, siege and field, but we have 
unlimited ammunition behind us, and can employ a system of 
silencing his guns whenever they appear, to which want of 
ammunition precludes his making any adequate reply. Fur-* 
ther than this, the skill of our gunners has been proved to be 
superior to anything he can bring against us, and our shells 
burst with certainty, where 20 per cent. (I have even heard of 
30 per cent.) of his projectiles never burst at all. 
We can therefore afford to go in for a higher parapet, 
which not only gives us the advantage of command at short 
ranges — which is as important now as it ever was — but we can 
also diminish the difficulties of drainage to a minimum, the 
most important point for many weeks to come. 
The sketch will make this clearer. 
In section A. as fast as you bale out the water it filters 
back 'again. In B you can just keep it under. 
Further, all kinds of rough but effective appliances for 
lifting the water out of B can be employed. The water caxi 
be allowed to settle in sumps (C) and then pumped out; but 
pumps soon clog in muddy water, and the simplest and most 
practical apparatus I know of is an application of the ordi- 
nary dredger type, which can be easily improvised out of the 
Moreover, at these very short distances apart, attacks and 
counter-attacks became almost nightly occurrences, and then it 
was clearly apparent that these deep, unstopped trenches were 
veritable man-traps if the enemy charged home. Troops could 
neither spring out of them to charge or escape from them to 
run away; in fact, they had no chance at all of putting up 
a fight for their lives, and the consequences have on several 
occasions been pretty disastrous on both sides. 
It is, however, the rain which is responsible for the 
general trend of opinion in favour of more rational ideaa. 
Men returning from the front have again and again repeated 
materials usually to be found in village smithies' and wheel- 
wrights' shops. It consists of a number of buckets shaped like 
a coal-scuttle, attached to an endless belt rotating over two 
drums (A B), held apart by a straining piece (C), and 
mounted on any convenient platform of sleepers, or similar 
timbering. A man turns the handle at A, and the contents 
of the buckets as they tip pour out into a trough which leads 
them clear out of the trench on the side away from the enemy. 
The sump pit can be made a continuous drain, and the whole 
apparatus moved backwards and forwards to prevent too large 
an accumulation of mud pilinjr up at the rear of the trench« 
