Letters from France | Page 9

wooden pathway which runs on piles--underneath
which is the gutter of water and mud which is the real floor of the
trench. Sometimes the water rises in the communication trenches so
that the boards float or disappear, and if you happen to step into an
interval between them you may quite well sink to your waist in thin
clay mud. The actual firing trenches and the dug-outs there are mostly
dry by comparison, except where the accumulated task of draining
them has been gaining on some regiment which garrisons them, and the
rear of the line is a morass of foul-smelling clay.
This difficulty never really reached us in Gallipoli, though we might
possibly have found the trenches falling in upon us in the rains of
winter if we had stayed. The trenches in France are full of traces of old
dug-outs and mouldering sandbags, collapsed through rain in the dim
past before the timbering of all works was looked on as a necessity. In
Anzac we never had the timber for this, and one doubts if we ever
could have had it had we stayed. The soil there was dry and held well,
and the trenches were deep and very elaborate to a degree which one
has not seen approached in France. There may be some parts here
where such trenches are possible, and where they exist; but I have not
seen them. It must be remembered that in many places in France there
are stretches of line where it is impossible to dig a trench at all in
winter, because you meet water as soon as you scratch the surface; and
therefore both our line and the German are a breastwork built up
instead of a trench dug down. The curious thing is that in the trenches
themselves you scarcely realise the difference. Your outlook there is
bounded in either case by two muddy walls over which you cannot
wisely put your head in the daylight. The place may be a glorious green
field, with flowers and birds and little reedy pools, if you are two feet
over the parapet. But you see nothing from week-end to week-end
except two muddy walls and the damp, dark interior of a small dug-out.
You see no more of the country than you would in a city street. Trench
life is always a city life.
[Illustration: THE TRENCHES HERE HAVE TO BE BUILT ABOVE

THE GROUND IN BREASTWORK AND NOT DUG BELOW IT]
The trench routine is much the same as it was in Gallipoli, except that
in no part which I have seen is the tension anything like so great. At
Anzac you were hanging on to the edge of a valley by your finger-nails,
and had to steal every yard that you could in order to have room to
build up a second line, and if possible a third line beyond that. Here
both you and the enemy have scores of miles behind you, and two or
three hundred yards more or less makes no difference worth
mentioning.
For this reason you would almost say that the German line in this
country was asleep compared with the line we used to know. A hundred
and fifty yards of green grass, with the skeleton that was once some old
hay wagon up-ended in the middle of it, and sky-blue water showing
through the grass blades in the depressions; a brown mud wall
straggling along the other side of the green--more or less parallel to
your breastwork, with white sandbags crowning it like an irregular
coping; the inevitable stumpy stakes and masses of rusted barbed wire
in front. You might watch it for an hour and the only sign of life you
would see would be a blue whiff of smoke from some black tin
chimney stuck up behind it. If you fire at the chimney probably it will
be taken down. The other day, chancing to look into a periscope, I
happened for a moment to see the top of a dark object moving along
half hidden by the opposing parapet. Some earth was being thrown up
over the breastwork just there, and probably the man had to step round
the work which was going on. It was the first and only time I have seen
a German in his own lines.
The German here really snipes much more with his field gun than with
his rifle. He does use his rifle, too, and is a good shot, but slow. A
spout of dust on the parapet--and a periscope has been shattered in the
observer's hand within a few yards of us. But it is generally the German
field gun that does his real sniping for him, shooting at any small body
of men behind the lines. Half a dozen are