Between the Lines

Excerpt

BETWEEN THE LINES

THE ADVANCED TRENCHES

'Near Blank, on the Dash-Dot front, a section of advanced trench changed hands several times, finally remaining in our possession.'

For perhaps the twentieth time in half an hour the look-out man in the advanced trench raised his head cautiously over the parapet and peered out into the darkness. A drizzling rain made it almost impossible to see beyond a few yards ahead, but then the German trench was not more than fifty yards off and the space between was criss-crossed and interlaced and a-bristle with the tangle of barb-wire defences erected by both sides. For the twentieth time the look-out peered and twisted his head sideways to listen, and for the twentieth time he was just lowering his head beneath the sheltering parapet when he stopped and stiffened into rigidity. There was no sound apart from the sharp cracks of the rifles near at hand and running diminuendo along the trenches into a rising and falling stutter of reports, the frequent whine and whistle of the more distant bullets, and the quick hiss and 'zipp' of the nearer ones, all sounds so constant and normal that the look-out paid no heed to them, put them, as it were, out of the focus of his hearing, and strained to catch the fainter but far more significant sound of a footstep squelching in the mud, the 'snip' of a wire-cutter at work, the low 'tang' of a jarred wire.

A few hundred yards down the line, a dazzling light sprang out, hung suspended, and slowly floated down, glowing nebulous in the misty rain, and throwing a soft radiance and dusky shadows and gleaming lines of silver along the parapets and wire entanglements.

Intent, the look-out stared to his front for a moment, flung muzzle over the parapet and butt to shoulder, and snapped a quick shot at one of the darker blotches that lay prone beyond the outer tangles of wire. The blotch jerked and sprawled, and the look-out shouted, slipped out the catch of his magazine cut-off, and pumped out the rounds as fast as fingers could work bolt and trigger, the stabbing flashes of the discharge lighting with sharp vivid glares his tense features, set teeth, and scowling eyes. There was a pause and stillness for the space of a couple of quick-drawn breaths, and then—pandemonium!

The forward trench flamed and blazed with spouts of rifle-fire, its slightly curved length clearly defined from end to end by the spitting flashes. Verey lights and magnesium flares turned the darkness to ghastly vivid light, the fierce red and orange of bursting bombs and grenades threw splashes of angry colour on the glistening wet parapets, the flat khaki caps of the British, the dark overcoats of the Germans struggling and hacking in the barb-wires. The eye was confused with the medley of leaping lights and shadows; the ear was dazed with the clamour and uproar of cracking rifles, screaming bullets, and shattering bombs, the oaths and yells, the shouted orders, the groans and outcries of the wounded. Then from overhead came a savage rush and shriek, a flash of light that showed vivid even amidst the confusion of light, a harder, more vicious crash than all the other crashing reports, and the shrapnel ripped down along the line of the German trench that erupted struggling, hurrying knots of men....