Evening star., 1918-07-07
FIRST Trench NIGHT.
Terror TO SOLDIER
Its Uncanny Experience and
Misgivings Yield Soon
to Easy Matter.
DEATHLY SILENCE PALLs
Correspondents of the Associated Press.

Correspondence OF the Associated Press.
LONDON, June 15.-What will the
first night in the trenches be is a
question that thousands of American
soldiers have faced perhaps with
some misgivings. certainly with lively
anticipation. The experience of many
Of them must be like that of British
ploughboy-soldier described by Lord
Fusiliers.
"A mans first night in the front
line is an epoch-making experience"
he writes. "It is like mans first
vote, or his twenty-first birthday-it
is a milestone in his life. marking the
change from the mimic warfare
behind 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
ploughboy just past eighteen when he
he went on his first sentry go in the
"It was quiet night and dawn was
only an hour or SO distant when
Cheeser took his post. The corporal
told him where to stand. warned him
Soldiers Experience Described.
There was Dick Cheeser, alone in
the dark. with an army in front of
him. eighty yards away. a resource
full. crafty and desperate enemy.
The stiffness of the night only added
to Cheeser's feeling OF responsibility.
The stiffness awed him. There had
not been shell all night. He put
and waited. Nobody fired at him.
He felt somehow that the night was
waiting for him, that something un-
canny and unexpected would happen
soon. He heard voices in a commune
cation trench somewhere behind him:
there were few sentences Of gruff.
unintelligible conversations; the
voices died away. There was a long
silence. Cheeser fell to wondering
whether the night was black or gray:
he stared hard at the night to study
its exact color: the night stared back
at him. and seemed to be threatening
him; 1t was gray. gray and artful.
like cat or a fox.
TT was uncanny. thought Cheeser.
II shells would come. or Germans,
or anything at all, you would know
how to take it: but this deathly
quiet. like mist over huge val
leys! Anything might happen. Chez
ser waited and waited. and the night
waited, too. He felt that they were
watching each other. the night and
he. both crouching. both ready to
spring.
Head Throbs From Thinking.
His mind grew so active that his
head throbbed with the physical ex-
ertion 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
ominous 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 q nice round
stone right across the blackness into
the German line
cold for the time of year. It made for
a moment lane in the mist over no
mans land. Cheeser peered into it.
but the mist closed round again. No.
night seemed to say, You can't guess
my secret And the awesome hush
thought the sentry. What are those
crafty enemies planning in all those
miles Of silence?
Lights Few and Far Between.
Even the very lights were few and
far between. When one went up far
hills of shadow seemed to 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 over the ominous valley.
"All the dangers and sinister shapes
and evil destinies that the sentry
faced that night cannot be pictured or
described in mere words. 1t was only
two hours that he stood there, and not
a shell fell in all that time, not a
German stirred.
'It was a weird and awful expert
ence, that first night in the trenches.
The next time it is an easy matter"