After that
comes silence; and we are able, in our hot, baking trenches, assisted
by clouds of bluebottles, to get on with the day's work.
This consists almost entirely in digging. As already stated, these are
bad trenches. The parapet is none too strong--at one point it has been
knocked down for three days running--the communication trenches are
few and narrow, and there are not nearly enough dug-outs. Yesterday
three men were wounded; and owing to the impossibility of carrying a
stretcher along certain parts of the trench, they had to be conveyed
to the rear in their ground-sheets--bumped against projections, bent
round sharp corners, and sometimes lifted, perforce, bodily into view
of the enemy. So every man toils with a will, knowing full well that
in a few hours' time he may prove to have been his own benefactor.
Only the sentries remain at the parapets. They no longer expose
themselves, as at night, but take advantage of the laws of optical
reflection, as exemplified by the trench periscope. (This, in spite
of its grand title, is nothing but a tiny mirror clipped on to a
bayonet.)
At half-past twelve comes dinner--bully-beef, with biscuit and
jam--after which each tired man, coiling himself up in the trench, or
crawling underground, according to the accommodation at his disposal,
drops off into instant and heavy slumber. The hours from two till five
in the afternoon are usually the most uneventful of the twenty-four,
and are therefore devoted to hardly-earned repose.
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