The Cordova daily times., 1918-01-25
SOME THRILLS IT NIGHT LIFE
 IN TRENCHES
(By United Press)

| spending first night on the fringe of No Mans Land precisely as no doubt hundreds of thousands of Amer jeans will before the end of the war, nocturnal trench has all the melo- dramatic elements to keep up interest and drive monotony away.
 Darkness seems to settle down quickly over the frowsy, weeded, grey strip in front which nobody owns and nobody treads in daylight. The low dirt ridge just behind a tangle of wooden stakes and barbed wire over across melts quickly into the failing light and nothing is visible except your own sandbagged parapet and the rag ged maze of your own barbed wire.
 A battery of French guns bark sharply in the rear. Firefly flashes wink mile behind the enemys wire. The French gunners are saying Good Night" to Boche battery and the dull Boom" Boom, Boom, then the squeal of enemy shell above tells you the Roche is answering. Unless unfor- seen things happen tonight the gun ners will rest on their arms" until daybreak. On quiet" sectors like this it often happens
 With darkness down the night shift are eating supper in their dugouts and rigging out in sheepskin jackets to be- gin the silent night watch over the parapets The dugOuts-corrugat steel and sandbag construction at in- terVals few yards back of the first ltne-are smelly and dark but filled with life. It's human life and insect life, the latter making little difference so long as steel and sandbags shod yagrant shells. Men say they can get accustomed to insects but the bite of a shell is different
 The United Press found the inevit- able American sign in these dugouts tonight. Pencilled names on the wood en hunks suggested New Yorks East Side, St Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and other purer American names sug- gested early settlers on the praries of the Middle West. In fact, it was in the trench just outside that a small body of American "Sammies" on No yember 3 fought desperately against overwhelming German odds in Ameri- cas- first little battle of the big Eur l Opean war.
 Tonight the pOilus of France are again eating their evening soup, meat stew, bread, cheese and drinking their rations of Pinard on the hunks where names like Janovicy, Meyers and Mea- dows are pencilled. Probably soon, khakied figures will again occupy these dugouts carrying on the watch over the wire ahead and over a his toric little American graveyard, two miles in the rear, where eleven silent earthmounds lie under as many rough heWn crosses, each bearing a name and the intertwined flags of America and France
 The night poilus have taken their places few yards apart along the parapet. The days poilus have filed into the dugouts for food and rest
 A machinegun is "rat-tat-tat-ing" it's evening tryout. All machinguns are frequently tested at ngiht. A fainter "rat-tat-tat-tat" shows that the Boche IS doing it too. A bright fiery streak roars up nearby and a small white parachute floats gently down with an lncandescent flare lighting up NoI Mans Land for a hundred yards around. Somebody saw a suspicious move beyond the wire, an officer ex- plained. The officer orders a few rifle grenades fired as a warning to proving Roche, perhaps trying to learn something or to cut the wire. | The poilu heads, silhouetting over the | parapet at intervals against the black ness beyond, duck down" for an in stant while the grenades explode with caVernous roars. These missiles flew Into hundred pieces each and wipe 1 out life for rods around.
 More machineguns are tapping, their warnings or having their "tryouts" here and there along the line The Boche again, as if nervous, is doing it too.
 A half hour follows without single spark of fireworks. But it breaks out aga1n-both sides watching, flaring, bombing, machinegunning suspicious things in that uncanny black stretch of