Snipers shot both sides
impartially. It was all most upsetting.
Well, as already indicated, the trench system has put all that right.
The trenches now run continuously--a long, irregular, but perfectly
definite line of cleavage--from the North Sea to the Vosges. Everybody
has been carefully sorted out--human beings on one side, Germans on
the other. ("Like the Zoo," observes Captain Wagstaffe.) Nothing could
be more suitable. _You're there, and I'm here, so what do we care?_ in
fact.
The result is an agreeable blend of war and peace. This week, for
instance, our battalion has been undergoing a sort of rest-cure a few
miles from the hottest part of the firing line. (We had a fairly heavy
spell of work last week.) In the morning we wash our clothes, and
perform a few mild martial exercises. In the afternoon we sleep, in
all degrees of _deshabille_, under the trees in an orchard. In the
evening we play football, or bathe in the canal, or lie on our backs
on the grass, watching our aeroplanes buzzing home to roost, attended
by German shrapnel. We could not have done this in the autumn. Now,
thanks to our trenches, a few miles away, we are as safe here as in
the wilds of Argyllshire or West Kensington.
But there are drawbacks to everything. The fact is, a trench is that
most uninteresting of human devices, a compromise. It is neither
satisfactory as a domicile nor efficient as a weapon of offence.
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