soldier--and it was decided that, as the trenches were not under fire at
the moment, we might go into them. He led the way into the
communication trench--a straight-sided winding ditch, shoulder-deep, and
just wide enough to walk in comfortably. Yellow clay was piled up
overhead on either side, and there was a wooden sidewalk. The ditch
twisted constantly as the trenches themselves do, so as not to be swept
by enfilading fire, and after some hundreds of yards of this twisting,
we came to the: first-line trench and the men's dugouts.

It was really a series of little caves, with walls of solid earth and
roofs of timber and sand-bags, proof against almost anything but the
plunging flight of heavy high-explosive shells. The floors of these
caves were higher than the bottom of the trench, so that an ordinary
rain would not flood them, and covered with straw. And they were full
of men, asleep, working over this and that--from one came the smell of
frying ham. The trench twisted snakelike in a general north and south
direction, and was fitted every few feet with metal firing-shields,
loopholed for rifles and machine guns. In each outer curve facing the
enemy a firing platform, about waist-high, had been cut in the earth,
with similar armored port-holes.

The Germans had been holding this trench for three months, and its whole
outer surface was frosted a sulphurous yellow from the smoke of exploded
shells. Shrapnel-casings and rusted shell-noses were sticking
everywhere in the clay, and each curve exposing a bit of surface to
the enemy was honeycombed with bullet holes. In one or two places
sand-bags, caves, and all had been torn out.

Except for an occasional far-off detonation and the more or less
constant and, so to speak, absent-minded cracking of rifles, a mere