The Russians crept out to repair damages to their works, and shook sandbags full of earth from the banquette over the outside of their parapets.
With the aid of his glasses, he scanned the German sandbags and, in the growing light, picked out a broad communicating trench winding towards the rear.
When the men of his company cleared the sandbags away from him, he was a gibbering wreck, unwounded but paralysed, and splashed with the blood of three dead men.
He was sitting on a pile of sandbags in the corner, his eyeglass in his eye, looking at an old copy of La Vie Parisienne, with evident relish.
The men can do nothing but "carry on"--the parapet must be kept in repair whatever the weather; the sandbags must be filled however wet and sticky the earth.
No sandbagsto spare, of course, so the question was, "What shall we make a parapet of?
It was nearly high enough, and with just three or four sandbags we felt certain it would do.
This necessitated about forty sandbags being filled, so it may easily be imagined we didn't do this all at once.
Above this roof I determined to pile up sandbags against the wall, right away up to the roof of the cottage.
We filled sandbags with the earth excavated from the sap, and with frenzied energy tried to complete our defences before dawn.
I arranged a pile of sandbags at each side of the hole in the floor in such a way as to be able to lay this curiosity on top to form a roof, the mattress part downwards.
Bullets are flicking the tops of the sandbags on the parapet in hundreds, whilst white streaks are shooting up with a swish into the sky and burst into bright radiating blobs of light--the star shell at its best.
I decided to come back later for the coal, with a few sandbags for filling, so I covered it over and hid it as much as possible.
When the inevitable order to charge was given, the British artillery shifted its range to the German rear and the Eighth Division dashed over the black and white sandbags behind which the Germans were crouching.
Here and there, where the trenches were rather shallow, they were built up with loose rocks and sandbags filled with stones.
The enemy's trenches were knocked to pieces; uprooted trees, planks, sandbags and dead bodies lay about in confusion.
One hundred yards in this winding alley of concrete and sandbag wall and we reached the main trench, a solid substantial rampart of concrete, sandbags and earth, with the grass growing on the side facing the enemy.
At Santa Marie del Grace the "Last Supper" of Leonardo is protected by a wall of sandbags and by a fireproof curtain.
We were even reduced to the necessity of sewing sandbags together to serve as a change of 'linen.
And from the positions on the Tartar Wall, which are now also dusted by a continually growing fire that would sweep our men off in a cloud of sandbags and brick-chips, the enemy's attacks can be best understood.
At the Main Gate, a majestic structure of stone and brick, a few sandbags had actually been got together, as if suggesting that later on something might be done.
Enormous quantities of sandbags have been turned out and placed in position, and all the walls are now loopholed.
Coolies are evolved from the converts of all classes, who, although they protest that they are unaccustomed to manual work, are merely given shovels and picks, sandbags and bricks, and resolutely told to commence and learn.
One giant Austrian had spread himself across the top of a roof near which I passed, with two sandbags to protect his head, and looked in his blue-black sailors clothes like an enormous fly squashed flat up there by the anger of the gods.
In that storm of brick-chips, splitsandbags and dented nickel, you could not move or reply.
A ring of sandbagsshowed where a tent had been pitched.
I had two sandbags in my lap, which were cast away directly.
It was now getting light, and this was attended with much danger, and in the work of filling sandbags and placing them at the barricade, we had several men killed in a very short time.
It was perhaps a somewhat expensive method to employ withsandbags costing something like a shilling each, but they served the purpose very well, and were in great demand in consequence.
All available tools and sandbags were got together in the trench to build a barricade at the right flank.
A certain number of sandbags were issued to each man about half-a-mile before he got to his work, and he was told that when these had been filled and laid he could return.
It is perhaps needless to say that many of the sandbags found a resting place in the nearest ditch, not far from the Royal Engineers' dump, where they were issued, and that the building of the breastwork did not proceed very rapidly.
Out in front weary men were consolidating the position--replacing sandbags and running out wire.
Presently they came to a place where a bastion of sandbags had been improvised as an emplacement for a Lewis gun.
Retracing my steps, I fixed the camera up and filmed the men entering the mines and others bringing up the excavated earth in sandbags and placing them on the outside of the barricade.
Sure enough the Germans had seen the movement, for bullets began battering into sandbags around the loophole.
I thought I would try with the stick whether the sandbags would fall easily.
Having obtained such a practical and prompt answer to my enquiry, though not exactly the kind I had expected, I had some more sandbags placed, one on top of the other, to shelter my head as much as possible.
Rolling myself in a blanket and using my trench-coat and boots as a pillow, I lay and listened to the continual crack of rifle-fire, and the thud of bullets striking and burying themselves in the sandbags of our shelter.
It topped the parapet of our firing trench (the Germans only forty-five yards away), and to break the alignment I placed sandbags on either side of it.
What tales these old sandbags might tell if only they could speak, tales of our brave boys and our Indian troops that would live for ever in the history of mankind.
Hardly had I left the machine than a "whizz-bang" fell and struck the parapet immediately above the ladder, tumbling the whole lot of sandbags down like a pack of cards.
There were several sandbags that required shifting.
All that now remained of a once prosperous group of farm buildings were the battered walls, but with the aid of a plentiful supply of sandbags and corrugated iron the cellars were made comparatively comfortable.
In the meantime, with the aid of a stick, I gradually pushed away several sandbagswhich interfered with my view on the parapet.
Depositing my camera and outfit close to some sandbags I went inside and introduced myself.
Some of them were killed by their own balls which had been picked out of the sandbags by the Americans and fired back.
The castle garrison had now gained the exact range of the naval battery, and thirteen-inch shell from the castle began to fall all around and close to the sandbags throwing up loose showers of soil.
A characteristic of the German trenches which I noticed on this and other occasions, was that their sandbags seemed to be generally white in colour, at any rate in those of the first line.
The accumulation of spoil was thus very difficult to dispose of, and frequently the trenches became almost impassable owing to the heaps of sandbags full of chalk stacked against their sides waiting to be emptied.
The parties paraded for the raid with their faces and knees blackened, with their bayonets covered in mud, and with their steel helmets encased in sandbagsto which grasses and weeds had been sewn.
During a bombardment, for instance, when a shell hits the trench, men are constantly being buried in a heap of sandbags and earth.
We always know when that crash is coming by a certain fierce orange glare which lights up the tops of our sandbags immediately before we hear the sound.
It is after the light has grown and become fixed that you will notice, if you look carefully for it, a thin film of blue smoke floating upwards from behind the sandbags on the other side of No Man's Land.
He sat on the wet sandbags and thought and thought.
On one occasion a man was known to have scraped the hoar frost off the sandbags to assuage his thirst, and some drank the dirty water that was to be found in shell craters.
The steel helmets were the means of saving many lives, and were covered with the same material as the sandbags were made of, for purposes of camouflage.
At one place we crossed a dip in the ground and a ditch, and the trench was built up with sandbags up to the ditch and there was a plank.
We got to work at once shying the sandbags over from the old front of the trench to the parados.
It was a funny sight to see chaps walking about in pants, and some with sandbags for trousers.
Last night, within the space of one hour, seventy-three shells fell into this wood, and the first of them registered a direct hit upon the dug-out of which those sandbags formed part.
I had it built up with sandbags ultimately, and they were quite annoyed!
Stuffed under their belts and through their packs they carry newspapers, broken staves for firewood, parcels from home, and sandbags loaded with mysterious comforts.
That working-party, filling sandbags just behind the machine-gun emplacement, are actually singing.
Barricades of sandbags were built up in the communicating trenches, which often ran through the enemy lines, to mark the boundary, and, behind these, men kept watch.
The dummy barricades with loop holes which obstruct the passages were built by the French in 1917, after the recapture of the fort, they replace the walls of sandbags which Commandant Raynal's heroic garrison had put up.
Sandbags protected them for some time, but at last the aid-de-camp was struck by shrapnel and had his face virtually blown away.
The ruined building is the signal box itself, protected by the line of sandbags in front of telegraph poles and shelled trees.
After the trench has been dug out the sandbags are placed along the top so as to form what is called a "parapet.
We were all so tired and sleepy that, working on automatically, we hardly knew whether we were putting the mud in the sandbags or outside them.
The sandbags shown it took us four hours one night to place in position.
The parapet barricade ofsandbags was called "The High Jump," because we had to mount it and get over it each night and jump for our lives, to take up our positions by our advanced listening and observation post.
As soon as we put our hands on the sandbags to clamber over the top of the parapet a hailstorm of bullets pelted us.
Infantry, light artillery, and engineers with entrenching tools and sandbags were to go in on the first wave and were expected to overcome initial enemy resistance and dig in on the beach.
They piled sandbags between the guns on the ramparts and dug “rat holes” in the terreplein for the protection of the gunners.
One day they lost their lieutenant, a great favourite, by a shell which wounded him mortally and kicked a lot of sandbags on top of him.
Poor shattered fragments of humanity, without any likeness to the human form remaining had to be gathered up in sandbags and carried away.
The men set to work like maniacs, pulling away the sandbags and cursing horribly.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "sandbags" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
