The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1915-05-06
AT HOME IN 4 TRENCH.
How Soldiers Live in bitches From
Which War is Fought.

is at all like the real thing. | have
seen photographs OF men standing in
a trench behind a covering line OF
.mangel wurZels, or was it beet-root?
which are true enough. but hardly
characteristic. No doubt many peo-
pie imagine the trenches to be a regu-
lar and formidable series of earth
works which turn a whole valley in
to a sort of fortress. They have
heard all sorts of Celebrations which
get mentioned in letters not because
they are characteristic, but just be-
cause they are peculiar. AS matter
Of fact, the surprising thing about
the trenches is that, like everything
else in. war, they make so little diff
ference to the normal appearance of
the landscape until you get quite
close to them. If an invisible war
farer could walk past them during
the day he might very easily get
through without noticing anything
peculiar unless an artillery lombard
ment happened to be going on. Rifle
fire and attacks are nearly all at
dawn or dusk or night. He would
have to be invisible, for any visible
wayfarer near the trenches would, of
course, be sniped. A few do make
their way to and fro-orderlies with
messages mostly, who creep along
bitches and dash across exposed in
tervals. Every evening little party
of men and mules goes to point as
near as it dare to the battalion and
takes shelter behind a house or a
wall, where it is met by one or two
men of each company to take the
daily rations back to the trenches.
Every evening, too, the stretcher-
bearers make their way into the
trenches and remove the men who
have been wounded during the day.
And every evening all these men are
"sniped' at by the enemy as they go
about their work. AS you approach
the trenches in the dusk the lack of
anything abnormal to the whole as
pect of things is, of course, even more
deceptive than by day. And know
ing as one does that one is within
few yards of two lines of men which
extend from the seacoast to Switzzer-
land, the blank appearance of every
thing Is tinglingly suggestive. You
are walking along an ordinary coun-
try road.
You have just passed the house
where the medical officer and his as
sistants have taken up their quarters
and whence they pass on the wound
ed by motors to the field ambulance.
A couple of days ago he had house
further up the road. but he was
shelled out of it. You pass other
houses-you are walking crouched
in the ditch by this time. BY day you
would notice that many Of these
houses have holes in them and that
there are patches of tiles wanting III
the roof, but by the evening light
they look quite normal, except that
the windows are lit up in none Of
them. Cattle and fowls wander about
over the fields and across the road.
They look quite normal, though in
daylight you would see that the COWS
have net been MIXED and the fowls
are starving. BY daylight, too, you
might notice here and there in field
a COW that had been struck by she'll
and killed, or another-poor beast
that had been merely wounded. 1t
was to put such a one out of its pain
that an officer of ours crept out of
his trench the other morning and
was killed as he crawled back. A lit
tie further still you may at least
come upon the trenches themselves
at a point where they chance to
touch the road. The reserve trenches
these will probably be, and they have
perhaps just been lined by a bat
talon that has marched out to be
in support during the night in ex-
pectation of an attack, and will march
back before sunrise in the morning.
They are, maybe, an Indian cavalry
regiment, which has never yet had a
chance of fighting on horseback and
can contribute only in this way to
the defence.
From your ditch by the roadside
will probably be a communicating
trench to the first of these reserve
trenches, and from here, if the en-
trenchments have been in existence
for some time, you will be able to get
to every point. not only in the re-
serve trenches, but the fire trenches
too, without putting your head above
the ground. Walking in slush (here
L. ~