“The fighting is now taking place over ground where both sides have for weeks past been excavating in all directions,” said another letter from the front, “until it has become a perfect labyrinth. A trench runs straight for a considerable distance, then it suddenly forks in three or four directions. One branch merely leads into a ditch full of water, used in drier weather as a means of communication; another ends abruptly in a cul-de-sac, probably an abandoned sap-head; the third winds on, leading into galleries and passages further forward.
“Sometimes where new ground is broken the spade turns up the long-buried dead, ghastly relics of former fights, and on all sides the surface of the earth is ploughed and furrowed by fragments of shell and bombs and distorted by mines. Seen from a distance, this apparently confused mass of passages, crossing and recrossing one another, resembles an irregular gridiron.
“The life led by the infantry on both sides at close quarters is a strange, cramped existence, with death always near, either by means of some missile from above or some mine explosion from beneath—a life which has one dull, monotonous background of mud and water. Even when there is but little fighting the troops are kept hard at work strengthening the existing defenses, constructing others, and improvising the shelter imperative in such weather.”
THE COMMON ENEMY, THE WEATHER
But it is not the guns or cannon of the enemy that affect the spirits of the soldiers. It is the weather. A week of alternate rain and snow, when the ill-drained dugouts are half-filled with a freezing viscid mud; when, day after day, the feet are numbed by the frost until all sensation in them is deadened; when the coarse, scanty ration is refused by the tortured stomach—then it is that the spirits of the stoutest falter. Let the enemy attack as he will, and he must fail. It is only in fighting that the men find an outlet for their rancor.
More than thirty years ago a well-known German general declared that a book on “Seasonal Tactics” might as properly be written as those on the tactics of weapons, and of geographical conditions; and in a recent issue of the Deutsche Revue an unsigned article by a veteran of the Franco-Prussian war recounts the difficulties that arise when the Frost King holds sway. “To begin with, the precious hours of daylight are much fewer, and even these may be shortened by overcast skies and heavy fogs. Soft snow and mud seriously impede marching and at times it is impossible to take cross-country cuts, even single horsemen having great difficulty in crossing the frozen ridges of plowed fields or stubble. Moreover, even regular highways may become so slippery that they endanger both man and horse, and in hilly country such conditions make it necessary to haul heavy artillery up steep ascents by man-power. Cold head-winds also greatly impede progress.
“The necessity of bringing the troops under cover enforces long marches at the end of the day’s work, and again at its beginning, and therefore makes extra demands on energy. . . . The early dark hinders the offense from carrying out its plans completely and from utilizing any advantage won by following it up energetically. Night battles become frequent. The defense seeks to regain what it has lost by day, the offense to make use of the long nights to win what it could not achieve in the daytime. Then, too, the need of getting warmed-up makes the troops more enterprising.”
Sinking of a Torpedoed Battleship.