But, look here, I absolutely must stop and censor some of the Platoon's letters before turning in. I'll write again as soon as ever I can and tell you the rest of it. But—a trench nearly 800 yards long, wire entanglements in front—casualties, one man wounded! Nobody felt much happier about it than your
"Temporary Gentleman."
A GREAT NIGHT'S WORK
In my last letter I think I told you all about our first night's work on the new trench; how it was cut, and the wire entanglements run out, between six in the evening and half-past two in the morning; and the casualty list just one man wounded! It may not seem much to you, but to us it seemed almost miraculous. I think the powers that be would have been quite pleased with us if we had managed it with, say, thirty or forty casualties.
Two and a half hours or so later, round about five o'clock, although you would have thought we should all be pretty tired, as no doubt we were (though not so tired, I fancy, as we mostly felt at midnight), everyone was interested in turning out for the morning Stand-to. We were all anxious to watch Mr. Boche's first glimpse of our night's work; not that we could see the expression on the faces of the Germans or hear their comments; but we could imagine a good deal of it, and wanted to see just what happened, anyhow.
A few sentry groups had been posted along the new line when we came in from it at half-past two; but these were withdrawn at the first glimmerings of coming dawn, since we could watch the front as closely from the original fire-trench, and it was possible, of course, that Fritz might just plaster the new line with shrap. and whizzes and so on as soon as he clapped eyes on it.
I was watching before the first greying of the dawn, from a sniper's post pretty close to the Boche line down near the beginning of Petticoat Lane. The first thing I made out in the Boche line, when the light was still only very faint, was the head of a sentry raised well above the parapet level, as he stared out at the nearest bit of our new wire. I turned half round and grabbed a rifle from a man in the trench, but the Boche had disappeared when I looked round again. Then the idea struck me, "Perhaps he'll bring an officer to look; a sergeant, anyhow." So I drew a very careful bead on that spot, and got my rifle comfortably settled on a mud rest.