“In really up-to-date entrenchments you may find kitchens, dining-rooms, bedrooms, and even stables. One regiment has first class cow-sheds. One day a whimsical ‘piou-piou,’ finding a cow wandering about in the danger zone, had the bright idea of finding shelter for it in the trenches. The example was quickly followed, and at this moment the —th Infantry possess an underground farm, in which fat kine, well cared for, give such quantities of milk that regular distributions of butter are being made—and very good butter, too.”
But this is not all. An officer writes home a tale of yet another one of the comforts of home added to the equipment of the trenches:
“We are clean people here. Thanks to the ingenuity of ——, we are able to take a warm bath every day from ten to twelve. We call this teasing the ‘bosches,’ for this bathing-establishment of the latest type is fitted up—would you believe it?—in the trenches!”
BRITISH REFUGES IN NORTHERN FRANCE
Describing trenches occupied by the British in their protracted “siege-warfare” in Northern France along and to the north of the Aisne Valley, a British officer wrote: “In the firing-line the men sleep and obtain shelter in the dugouts they have hollowed or ‘undercut’ in the side of the trenches. These refuges are slightly raised above the bottom of the trench, so as to remain dry in wet weather. The floor of the trench is also sloped for purposes of draining. Some trenches are provided with head-cover, and others with overhead cover, the latter, of course, giving protection from the weather as well as from shrapnel balls and splinters of shells. . . . At all points subject to shell-fire access to the firing-line from behind is provided by communication-trenches. These are now so good that it is possible to cross in safety the fire-swept zone to the advanced trenches from the billets in villages, the bivouacs in quarries, or the other places where the headquarters of units happen to be.”
“PICNICKING” IN THE OPEN AIR
A cavalry subaltern gave the following account of life in the trenches: “Picnicking in the open air, day and night (you never see a roof now), is the only real method of existence. There are loads of straw to bed down on, and everyone sleeps like a log, in turn, even with shrapnel bursting within fifty yards.”
RAVAGES OF ARTILLERY FIRE
One English officer described the ravages of modern artillery fire, not only upon all men, animals and buildings within its zone, but upon the very face of nature itself: “In the trenches crouch lines of men, in brown or gray or blue, coated with mud, unshaven, hollow-eyed with the continual strain.”