Denver labor bulletin., 1918-08-10
FIRST NIGHT IN
FRONT TRENCHES
(London Correspondence }

Wnat VIII the nrSt night IN the
trenches be, is question that thou
sands of American soldiers have faced
perhaps with some misgiving, GER
tainly with lively anticipation. The
experience of many of them must be
like that of British plowboy-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. Its like a mans first
vote, or his twenty-first birthday-it
is 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 plow-
boy Just past eighteen when he en-
listed, and not yet nineteen when he
went on his first sentry go in the
front line.
''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
to keep a good lookout and left him.
"There was Dick Cheeser, alone in
him, eighty yards away, 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 a shell all night. He put his
head over the parapet gingerly 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 commu-
nication trench somewhere behind
him; there were a few sentences of
gruff, unintelligible conversation; 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
it's exact color; the night stared back
at him, and seemed to be threatening
him; it was gray, gray and artful, like
cat or fox.
at was uncanny, thought Cheeser.
If shells 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
other, the night and he, both crouch
ing, both ready TO spring.
"His mind grew so active that his
head throbbed with the physical exer-
tion of thinking. He was watching
with eyes and ears and imagination,
hoping to anticipate by 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 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. 1t made
for 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 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 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 level over the ominous val
ley.
"All the dangers and sinister shapes
and evil destinies that the sentry faced
that night cannot be pictured or de-
scribed in mere words. 1t was only
two hours that he stood there, and
not a shell fell in all that time, not
German stirred.
at is weird and awful experience,
that first night in the trenches. The
next time it is an easy matter"
THEY ARE so CARELESS.
Hinnnnota mug meat is said To be as