So we wait until it is very dark before we reach our position in the works.
The place where we have to dig is in the front lines. We have to construct circular dugouts for machine guns, with their rounded platforms, and to connect them with the trench by underground trenches.
We climb over the trench carrying our tools in our hands and slip between the barbed wire, but we have scarcely gone a yard when a heavy fusillade warns us that this time we are spotted. We dig in.
“Is anyone hit?”
No reply, no groans; everyone is there, flat, stretched out. We wait flat in the grass and the mud until the star shells fall, and as soon as one has, and before the following one has scaled through space and lighted it with its dim light, we jump into the hole which the fatigue party of yesterday dug.
But the tools aren’t idle, although we guess rather than hear the blows of the pick digging in the deep rich earth and the shovelers throwing it out as far on the parapet as possible so as not to form a salient.
We dig for hours without interruption, lowering our heads in the holes as the star shells go up, and taking up our tasks as soon as it is dark again.
The enemy has discovered the time of our fatigue parties, and to-morrow it will know the exact position of our work, so that it will be somewhat uncomfortable to continue. It must be finished to-night.
A company of Territorials is stretching barbed wire on our right.
Between each star shell we can hear the hammering of the sledges against the stakes, the strain of the tension on the wire, and when the traitorous light shines again these wonderful workers don’t even hide. They remain hanging on the barbed wire, motionless and disjointed like corpses. They look so much like them that the enemy doesn’t even fire, as he feels certain that he has annihilated this gang which heroically continues its gigantic task.