Bisbee daily review., 1918-07-06
FIRST NIGHT IS
 MILESTONE IN
 SOLDIERS LIFE
initial Experience in Trenches is Similar to First Vote or Twenty-first Birthday, Says Correspondent

LONDON-(COr respOndence of The Associated Press)-What will the first night in the trenches be, is a question that thousands of American soldiers | have faced perhaps with some misgiv- ings, certainly with lively anticipation. The experience of many of them must | be like that of a British plOugh-bOy soldier described by Lord Dunsany, Captain of the Inniskilling Fusiliers. "A mans first night in the front line is an epOch-making experience" he writes. 'It is like 8 mans first vote, CT his twenty-first birthday-it is change from the mimic warfare be- hind the lines to the grim realities of actual conflict
 Perhaps l can best explain how this experience affects a soldier by telling you the story of a recruits first night in the trenches. Dick Cheeser, one of. my men, was a plough-boy just past IS when he enlisted, and not yet 19 when he went on his first sentry Ego" in the front line.
 Tt was a quiet night, and dawn was only an hour or so distant when Chees- CT took his post. The corporal told him where to stand, warned him to keep a good lookout, and left him.
 There was Dick Cheeser, alone in the dark. with an army in front or him. eighty yards away, a resOurceful, crafty and desperate enemy. The still ness of the night only added to Chees- CTS feeling of responsibility. The still ness awed him. There had not been a shell all night He put his head over the parapet gingerly and waited. No body fired at him. He felt somehow that the night was waiting for him. that something uncanny and uneXDect- ed would happen soon. He heard vOic- es in a communicating trench some where behind him; there were a few sentences of gruff, unintelligible con- versatiOn; the voices died away. There was a long silence. Cheeser fell to wondering whether the night was black or grey; he stared hard at the night to study its exact color; the night stared back at him, and seemed to be threatening him; it was gray, gray and artful, like a cat or a fox.
 Tt was uncanny. thought Cheeser. If shels would come, or Germans, or anything at all. you would know how to take it; but this deathly quiet. like mist over huge valleysi Anything might happen. Cheeser waited and waited, and the night waited too. He felt that they were watching each Oth- CT, the night and he, both crOuching. both ready to spring.
 His mind grew SO active that his head throbbed with the physical exer- ton of thinking. He was watching with eyes and ears and imagination, hoping to anticipate by a second or two the dread Something that he felt was sure to happen soon in the Omi- nous mist of No Mans Land He thought of throwing a stone out into the blackness, just to see what would happen. Then he began to wish for his boyhoOd's slingshot. so that he could catapult a nice round stone right across the blackness into the German line.
 "A little wind blew in the night. too cold for the time of year. It made for a moment a lane in the mist over No Mans Land Cheeser peered into it. but the mist closed round again. No. the night seemed to say, you cant guess my secret And the awesome hush intensified What are they up to now? thought the sentry. What are those crafty enemies planning in all those miles of silence?
 Even the very lights were few and far between. When one went up. far hills of shadow seemed Co sit and brood over the valley; black shapes grew up and vanished in the shadow The rocket faded and the hills went back into mystery again. and Cheeser still peered level over the ominOus valley.
 "All the dangers and sinister shapes and evil dostinies that the sentry fac cd that night cannot be pictured or de- scribed in mere words. IL was only two hours that he stood there. and not a she'll fell in all that time, not a Ger man stirred.