15 
LAND & WATER 
August 17, 191b 
A Night in the Salient 
By an Officer 
"W'W" THEN the slow summer dusk begins to deepen, 
% ^ / men begin to stir in the trenches. All day 
^^^ long they have slept or dozed in the warm 
T T sunshine, lain in their dug-outs — little holes 
in the parado — or nodded on the fire-step in a sultry 
atmospherti of buzzing bluebottles and occasional shots 
from snipers' riHes. For here you cannot move or walk 
about by day, the sniping (from dominating positions) 
is too keen. But when the dusk deepens into that 
pearly-blue light which for a man moving is the most 
invisible, 'long files of men start off for the trenches and the 
sound of tramping feet is heard on the roads. 
Night by night — and all night long — those files of 
ghostly figures move along the roads and trenches. Ration 
parties, carrying parties, parties with working material, 
engineers, generals and officers of inspection rank, parties 
with pick and shovel, and many other sorts of workers 
move along those roads. A little later on you may see 
them, patiently bending under their loads, silhouette 
against the rising moon. Some of the carriers are so 
strangely silent they seem like ghosts of men tramping 
across the plain, only their feet go " pit-patter," " pit- 
patter," when they are quite near ; these are wearing 
long thigh-boots with rubber soles. 
.\nd they have to hurry. For the midsummer night 
is short , and between the grey twilight and the rosy 
dawn there is but a space of four hours. God help him 
who is caught by the sunshine in an open place ! 
And with the deepening dusk a new life begins in the 
trenches. The buzz of the bluebottles and the crack of 
the sniper's rifle give place to the chatter of machine 
guns and the slow glare of the star-lights. Shadow and 
mystery creep in where was the stark nakedness of shell- 
holes, broken trees and lines of battered sandbags. 
Slowly, with many exclamations, pauses, and much hard 
swearing, the working party moves along the crowded 
trench, then out into the sap. There is a little narrow ridge 
between the parapet of the sap and a chain of enormous 
shell-holes. In these the water ghstens. The men are 
silent now that they are out in the middle of No Man's 
Land scarcely 70 yards from the German trench. Only 
when one of them trips over the frequent loose strands of 
wire or stumbles into a shell-hole you hear a scuffle 
followed by a muttered curse. 
Battleground Digging 
It is a question of digging a new trench. Get them 
lined out quickly, quietly, three yards apart ; let each 
man work his hardest to dig himself in. They know it 
too, and put their backs into the task. It's surprising 
how quickly they get into the ground considering the 
heavy spongy state of all this water-logged country. 
Quickly they throw up the earth in front which gives a 
feeling of protection, even if a somewhat illusory one. 
Nor can the task be considered in- any way pleasant. 
A peculiar and horrible stench clings to the ground, 
thicker and more foetid in some places than in others, 
but all-pervading. It is the sickly stench of dead bodies. 
Strange and sometimes fearsome things are dug out of the 
ground. All drab and muddy, yielding and soft, so 
that you could not recognise it as a human thing was 
the body of a German. There was no head, only the 
trunk. Somebody cut off two of his buttons as a 
memento, another found his rifle, completely rusted 
and caked in mud. Then they dug up a machine gun. 
rusted too, and mud-caked, which must have been buried 
in the last battle. The curious thing about this is that 
it was evidently a British gun converted by the Germans, 
for the lock is German, so is the barrel. Once cleaned, it 
w ill be serviceable again and will be re-converted to fire 
English ammunition. 
The night is a fairly quiet one. Yet apart from the 
stertorous breathing of the men labouring at their trench, 
the darkness is full of sounds. Now it is the dismal 
wail of a stray bullet hungrily seeking a billet. Now it 
is the clack-clack-dack of the machine-guns chattering 
to each other, like demons in Hell. One of these sweeps 
round — traverses, the gunners call it — regularly every 
few minutes, and the terrifying rush of the bullets causes 
every man to he flat on his stomach. A machine-gun, 
when traversing, nearly always sweeps back again, so 
it is not safe to get up at once.' Every now and then a 
succession of explosions, sharp, yet heavy and dull, unlike 
that of a shell, proclaims that" bombs are being thrown 
not far off — probably from adjacent saps. Occasionally 
through the night a terrific explosion causes the atmos- 
phere to reverberate and everyone to start. It is a 
minenwerfer bomb bursting somewhere away on the 
right, and it is followed by a succession of sharp reports 
and heavy explosions from one of our own trench-guns 
retaUating. In the silent pauses between these sounds 
may be heard the harsh cry. of some bird — I know not 
its name — which haunts the coarse grass and secret places 
of the salient. Occasionally a distant rattle and a harsh 
grating sound becomes audible — the (icrman transport 
on the roads beyond the ridge. A lighter and more 
continuous grating sound is made by the trolleys rolling 
along one of the numerous light railways which run just 
behind the enemy's front line. Every now and again, too, 
in silent pauses, the barking of dogs may be distinguished— 
these are the German pets which they keep in their 
trenches. 
A Casualty 
Two or three times in the night the whole horizon is 
of a sudden lit up by the vivid flashes of our own guns, 
so vivid that you may distinguish trees' and other objects 
against their background ; then you hear a distan t 
rumble followed by the roar of the shells and observe the 
quick glare as they burst on the enemies' second line. 
Strange figures come prowling through the darkness — 
you cannot tell for certain whether friend or foe. Ever 
and anon the star lights go up and in their cold radiance 
you may see those figures standing still as statues. Yet 
they would be better advised to throw themselves down. 
They are the ^covering parties and the engineers moving 
out "in front. "Once the man who fires the "Very " pistol 
can be plainly seen and then you know that the Germans, 
too, are out in No Man's Land. Once three lights go 
up in quick succession and simultaneously two shots 
ring out. These are followed immediately by a lo"ud 
outcry close at hand, which shows that at least 
one of the bullets has done its work—" Oh ! Oh ! .Oh ! " 
Gradually the loud cries sink into a pitiful munnur 
as of a child in pain , and presently this lapses into silence. 
" Pass the word down for the stretcher-bearers ! " They 
lay him down in a shell-hole— it is an officer of engineers, 
shot through both thighs. They do not think he is 
bad, but the moon shines down upon a face unnaturally 
still and pallid, and when the doctor comes he is dead. 
The Beginning of the Day 
A fresh feeling in the air and a faint lightening in the 
sky beyond the German lines suggests that daybreak is 
not far off. The men have dug their trench, many are 
resting on their spades, perspiring profusely. They 
prepare to move off. Suddenly a machine-gun opens 
and one of them sits down quickly clasping his ankle 
with both hands. •" Oo— er," he mutters, " I'm hit. 
It don't 'arf hurt." A comrade takes off his puttees 
and unlaces his boot. " Is it a Blighty one d'ye think ? " 
enquires the victim anxiously, and upon being told that 
it probably is, since he has been shot through the ankle, 
he becomes quite cheerful despite the pain. 
Soon the word is passed down to lead back, and so the 
men file once more along the sap into the main trench. 
From the woods afar off comes the call of a cuckoo and 
gradually the various points of the landscape appear. 
Everybody makes tea, and before long is enjoying a hearty 
breakfast, followed by a long sleep. 
