The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1915-01-02
LIFE IN TRENCHES
WILDLY DESCRIBED
SOLDIERS MUST BE RAIN, SNOW,
COLD AND BULLET PROOF,
WRITER SAYS.
(By Associated PreSs.)

London, Jan. 1.-The following &C.
count of life at the front is from a
correspondent who volunteered for
service at the beginning of the war,
and has since been promoted to the
rank of officer:
During the latter part of November
the army in the trenches was well
nigh perishing with cold; since early
december it has been the victim of
persistent rain and flood. Night after
night, whole companies are flooded
out of their trenches while a rear
rangement OF the forces has made it
impossible to give the men their for
mer weekly three days of rest in the
villages behind the lines. All the ad-
vanced forces will remain in their
trenches now for eighteen days; then
they hope to have a brief relief.
ut is difficult to give an idea of
what rain means in the trenches. The
lines under frosty conditions seem
such an orderly, permanent, and town.
like series of cubby-holes that when
they all start to melt away and cave
In under the influence of thaw and
rain, 1t is as if one were trying to
travel through a pitchdark London in
ruins. Officers who were glorying IN
fine new dug-out equipped with all
the trench comforts, suddenly found
themselves buried in mass of col
lapsed earth of the consistency and
quality of thick paint.
"The latest gossip here is that the
Indian division and the Germans were
SO close to each other day or two
ago that they used the same parapet
for their trenches and took turns at
firing through their mutual loop-holes.
That of course is little exaggerated,
but serves to illustrate the manner in
which the two armies keen continually
getting closer and closer. Handmade
bombs fashioned out of biscuit tins
can be used advantageously at many
points.
Generally, however, the front
trenches are about two hundred yards
apart in this section. That gives the
sharp-shooters plenty of chance to get
in their iine work, and it is dangerous
to push ones head above a trench
even to sight a rife. Many OF the
sharp-shooters are using periscopes
much like those Of the submarine, and
with these they can sight and shoot
accurately without coming anywhere
near the top of the trench. The op-
posing sharpshooters Of course de-
light in efforts to hit the tube of the
periscope, and frequently succeed.
Since the rains and floods came, the
communication trenches have largely
oozed away. Some of them are like
rivers; others are knee-keep with
pasty mud of exactly the same con-
sistency as bakers dough. A regiment
which passed through one such trench
a day or two ago left three men be.
hind and had to send a relief party
back to dig them out.
"Under such circumstances, the la
Dor of bringing up ammunition and ra-
lions from the rear is terrific, and the
men assigned to this labor reach their
destination in state of utter fatigue;
nevertheless they have to take their
turn at sentry duty later in the night.
"The enemy is very business like
and misses no chance to shoot any.
man who exposes himself. Today, for
instance, an English soldier was up in
a willow tree cutting withes. A shot
passed him, and he sportively sig
nailed "A miss; left A second shot
came, and he signalled "A miss; right.
The enemy profited by his advice, and
the third shot passed straight through
his head.
There are the strictest order
against men exposing themselves; but
some Of the careless ones are surpris-
ihgly disregardful of their safety. Yes.
terday a private who was dragging
sack of coal walked slowly along the
top of communicating trench for
considerable distance in full view of
A L. L a
tom of the trench was muddy and
travelling down there in safety would
have been so laborious than on the
firm soil above. A hail of bullets |
missed him, but he even stopped to,
light his pipe behind an eighteen-incb !