During the day it was
impossible to look over the trench, as we were only fifty
yards from the Germans, so we considered it advisable not to
exhibit too much curiosity in case our health suffered
thereby. At night time the Germans use star-shells to
illuminate the proceedings, and they always seem nervy and
think we are going to attack their trench. If we start
firing a little more than usual they think it is the signal
for an attack, and they blaze away like fury. We had a good
example of this on our last night in the trenches.
"Someone started firing, someone else took it up and in no
time the noise was like the final end-up of fireworks at the
White City. From that it got much worse, and I suppose they
really thought we were going for them, so their artillery
sent us a few shells; but they did no damage. Eventually
they seemed satisfied that we were quite safe, so they wound
up the proceedings.
"There is one lot here who, whenever they go into the
trenches, shove their hats on their rifles, wave them about,
and then shout across to the Germans to come out in the open
and have a proper fight. Whenever this happens the Germans
lie low and hardly fire a shot.
"One advantage of being so close to the Germans is that they
cannot shell us without damaging their own trench as much as
ours, so that, although we heard plenty going along
overhead, we had none very near us.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41