The defenders of the trench were already dead or dying before our heroes reached it.
Even in the ordinary routine of trench life, so many decisions have to be made, with the chance of a "telling off" whichever way you choose, and the lives of other men hanging in the balance.
Their nerves quiver when a shell or a "Minnie" falls into the trenchnear them, and then they smile to hide their weakness.
Of all the hours of dismay that come to a soldier there are really few more trying to the nerves than when he is sitting in a trench under heavy fire from high-explosive shells or bombs from trench mortars.
You think of a canyon as a greattrench between mountains.
This one is a colossal trench with side canyons going off laterally its full length, dozens of them to each mile, like ribs along a backbone.
We ordinarily think of a canyon as a narrow cleft or trench in the rocks, seldom more than a few hundred feet deep and wide, and very seldom more than a few miles long.
He moved and I grasped him by the neck and was ready to use my trench knife when he grunted: “Who the hell’s that?
And in that most crucial moment of my life, I leaped out of the trench and in the same instant I saw my savior.
Also under a demoniac fire, stretcher bearers took away a small, smashed soldier I had fallen over in a shell-hole at the close approach to the German trench the night before.
In the morning that particular fight was over and around the section of the trench where this man fought we counted forty-seven Turkish dead.
In that event, indeed, they would not have traveled together nor directly along the trench path, but would have stalked me and tried to meet me, one on either side.
There came a rush of men out of the trench to our rescue and they carried us both into its protection.
We went up the knoll, scrambling for a foot-hold, digging footholds for ourselves with trench knives and trench tools.
One trench game is to bet on who can capture the most cootees in a given time.
I may as well frankly admit that through all my experiences in trench fighting since then, my habit became that of calling into a dug-out: “How many men are down there?
But before we might move on Moquet we must dispose of a sky-line trench just ahead.
Here was a deep, deep trench that girdled it the whole way round, and there was only a single bridge by which the trench could be crossed.
Another man crawled over the broken débris of the trenchto where they stood.
It began to look as if the steadily-moving line was going to reach the first trench with very little loss.
One battalion in the Elbow Trench had been shelled rather heavily about dawn, but the fire had died away before the moment for the attack, smothered probably by the greater volume of our artillery fire.
In that trench Knightley will not hear though all Tangier scream its gossip in his ears.
Scrope saw the trench again yawn up before his eyes.
The next day, in the morning, the bird was an inch and a half under ground, and the trench remained open the whole day, the corpse seeming as if laid out upon a bier, surrounded with a rampart of mould.
During the long trench battle of the middle years "the absence of room for manoeuvre made the importance of cavalry less apparent.
But meanwhile the enemy is stealing up behind, between the trench and the fort.
The soil taken from this trench was made into bricks, and burnt; and these bricks were applied, first to lining the trench and then to building the wall.
Came a cry of rage from inside the trench as the Germans saw their prey about to escape.
With both hands he laid about him lustily, the while endeavoring to push through the enemy and reach the trench beyond.
But he had leaped too soon, and instead of reaching the top he fell short, and dropped down inside the trench again.
Hal leaped to the top of the trench and toppled to the ground beyond even as half a score of bullets sang across the spot where his head had been a moment before.
Illustration: British Tommy (returning to trench in which he has lately been fighting, now temporarily occupied by the enemy).
Here's Fevrier coming, moist and blowy, And any trench you leave for him Not saturated to the brim He will accommodate its thirst As in the days of NOE.
They saw at once the perilous position they were in, and asked for permission to dig a trench for themselves, which was granted.
Speaking of his feelings in the field hospital and alongside the burying trench he says: "War seems devil's work.
Get these two groups together; we'll make a trench midway.
This trench did not, however, continue round the two ends of the barrow.
The earth of which they are composed was dug out from a trench on either side of the mound.
A trench made in the earth by digging, particularly a trench for draining wet land, for guarding or fencing inclosures, or for preventing an approach to a town or fortress.
He has learned what it feels like to slip and fall on something soft and slime-like on his way to a new trench at night and then to find that he had slid his hand into the decaying body of a long-dead German soldier.
If a new trench mortar comes along, you'd think it would be just a new trench mortar and there would be an end of it; but that's not so with him.
I trench on no theological discussion when I record the unfavourable impression made upon all western Europe by the failure of the Holy Father to pronounce definitely upon the rights and wrongs of the war.
Here, he will point out, is a little difference between the German trench beyond the wood since yesterday.
By this the wire is blown away, the trench wrecked and the defender held down as the attack charges up.
The Germans "strafed" thistrench overnight, and the men are tired and sleepy.
But now appear the dug-out elaborating the trench and the defensive battery behind the trench.
A great number of telephone wires come into the trench and cross and recross it.
Obviously to enhance and extend the range of the preliminary bombardment behind the actual trench line, to destroy or block, if it can, the dug-outs and destroy or silence the counter offensive artillery.
Then you wonder what the trench is like in really wet weather.
We reach a supporting trench in which men are waiting in a state of nearly insupportable boredom for the midday stew, the one event of interest in a day-long vigil.
After these sensational incidents the trench quiets down again and continues to wind endlessly--just a sandy, extremely narrow vertical walled trench.
It was made a week or so ago by joining up shell craters, and if all goes well we move into the German trench along by the line of scraggy trees, at which we peep discreetly, to-morrow night.
The trench falls back to its former holders under this fire and a counter attack.
We go on to a shallow trench in which we must stoop, and which has been badly knocked about.
Moving cautiously, stopping to get their bearings from the sounds of the guns above them, they walked the trench in Indian file.
Down near the foot of the hill, near the trench they had traveled a short while before, York answered the challenge to "Halt!
As the trench now led down the hill, carrying the Americans away from the gunners they sought, the detachment came out of it and took skirmish formation in the dense and tangled bushes.
In their silent advance they approached to eighty yards of the Boer traverse trench before discovered.
The Canadians lying down replied, while the engineers close behind them dug, till a trench 100 yards long, and giving good cover, ran from the bank to the north.
The kopje itself was also manned, but it is allowable to believe that the experience of the war, already illustrated by many encounters, must have persuaded so shrewd a fighter as Cronje of the superior advantage of the trench system.
Coe made the General comfortable in the bottom of the trench beside me, and in a few minutes he was sound asleep with the shells still beating their infernal tatoo in the heavens over us.
The Germans spotted his Glengarry and began shelling my trenchwith "Jack Johnsons," and Major Marshall had to clear out.
Finally he sat down in his trenchnever to rise again.
As he was stringing the wires to the trench he had to duck several times.
The steward brought me in some Bovril and biscuits, and Major Marshall, who also kept to his bunk on my advice, began feeding upon hard tack to get into trench practice.
He won out of the trench only to die on the Gravenstafel Ridge.
When they returned they told me that the bit of trench was almost filled with dead but they could not find my adjutant.
Fred" Macdonald's question to me would always be, "How long are they going to keep us at this rotten trench business?
I had a fairly comfortable section of trench and tried to snatch a wink of sleep in the bottom of it during the afternoon.
They were in a trench that was very much exposed which formed the connecting link between the battalion which held the wood north of brigade headquarters and the line of the 3rd Brigade before St. Julien.
Sergeant Lewis and I jumped out and pulled him out on to the banquette of his trench and in a minute had the overcoat and jacket off him.
A sapper works on a trench of this kind differently to the way he works on an ordinary trench.
The man is then kept in the trench till evening when he is taken out on a stretcher.
Well, this kind of a sap was a connecting trench which the Germans were running out from their line so they could get closer to our line in order to start another line of trenches, or else get close up with a lot of men to attack us.
All those who stuck to the trench and did not use wet bandoliers or handkerchiefs died.
One of those hills the leader chooses, rounded and grassy; there they encamp, and they dig a trench and build huts.
There is a letter in existence written by a young soldier who volunteered at the start, a letter which he wrote to his unborn son as he sat in a front line trench in France.
But there was Taylor, for example, a horse gunner I believe, who was attached to the trench "Mortuaries.
Once during the battle of Loos while we were attacking he took several of his cannon over into the Boche trench which we had succeeded in capturing.
Unfortunately something went wrong on our flank and Taylor with the wonderful Second Rifle Brigade was left in this trench surrounded by Boches in helmets with spikes in them.
They were jammed tight in the narrow, well-formed German trench and only a bomber at each end could fight.
It is useless for the doctor to explain that unless a man is in the pink of condition it is impossible for him to last long in trench warfare.
Even football has developed into a form of trench warfare, sometimes not without frightfulness.
Winn lay peacefully between the old trench and the new, beyond resentment, beyond confusion, in the direct simplicity of death.
Out of the dark, vague shapes loomed, the trench filled with the sound of deep breathing and scuffling, and the shriek of sudden pain.
Lionel's eyes closed again and he knew nothing more of the rough bandaging, the endless waiting in the sodden trench while Winn sat motionless beside him, watching his flickering breath.
They seized the trench and held it, there were no prisoners taken in the dark, and after the first light they ceased to hear Winn's voice.
The creek water of the colony is generally too brown, and the trench water too muddy, and contains often too much salt to produce starches of the finest color, hence recourse would require to be had to rain water, or Artesian water.
The trench was on a line with two short hedges of bamboo brier, diverging from each other in the shape of the letter V, having a place of egress at the angle.
This trench was made on a line proceeding straight from a place of concealment, selected within good shooting distance.
It was simply a covered enclosure, of ten or twelve feet square, with a deep trench communicating from the outside to the centre.
