“Three men from our company were detailed to dig an advance rifle-pit. We started after dark with picks and shovels. Two men with picks scratched up the dirt, the third man threw it out. We made no noise; a mole couldn’t have worked more silently. Heavens, how we scratched and dug! By daylight, our pit was deep enough to shelter us. It had to be or we wouldn’t have come back. But it was not deep enough for us to stand up. All day we sat and lay in that hole. At noon the sun almost roasted us brown, although we crouched against the shaded wall.
“In the afternoon it began to rain and some of our dirt washed back into the pit.
“‘Mike,’ I said to my Irish fellow-digger, ‘I guess we’ll have to swim or surrender.’
“‘By me faith,’ Mike replied, ‘I’ll wait till the water runs over me gun-muzzle. We can’t surrender because our shirts are too dirty for white flags.’
“We agreed that Mike was right, and sitting in the sticky mud, we ate the rest of our bread and bacon before the rain could spoil it.
“After the rain was over, some sharpshooters began to practice on our pit. They couldn’t hit us, and we were right glad that they gave us something to think and talk about.
“After dark three other men relieved us and we had a chance to stretch our bones.”
“What did these men have to do?” the boys wanted to know.
“Deepen the pit,” the soldier told them, “and widen it to right and left in the direction of two other rifle-pits. You see in that way we push our lines closer and closer to the enemy.
“In many places we are so close now that the men can talk to each other.”