TRENCHES AND CONCEALMENT
In October I was in the neighborhood of Lassigny and Roye where heavy fighting was and had been going on. There was a little village called Erches to the northwest of these places. Here were the French advance trenches. I was in this village during the height of operations and was told that we were then only 150 or 200 yards from the German trenches. Standing behind a house corner in this village of Erches, I could see nothing unusual in any direction. I could see no signs of French or German activity nor of life of any kind, although the French infantry trenches extended to our right and left and the Germans were directly in front of us. The landscape which spread away in all directions looked perfectly normal and unbroken except for a few shell craters. The only manifestations of activity were the distant rumbling of guns, and the shrapnel bursting over our heads. Although I stayed there for more than an hour, the only Frenchmen I saw were a few who joined me behind the house; they came from trenches hidden within it, or from an underground trench, the opening of which was behind the house. I recount this to accent the concealment of all troops in this war. Trenches are made to resemble the landscape in which they are placed. If they are in a brown mowed field, hay is scattered over all fresh earth, and if they are made in pasture land all the earth is carefully carried away or is spread out and sodded over.