[CHAPTER VIII]
Making good damages, and strengthening and supplementing the works on the various hills.
The following morning (September 24) the damage done to our trenches and batteries was thoroughly surveyed, and we at once eagerly set to work to renew those that had been ruined, and to complete those left untouched.
Several bomb-proofs had been shattered by heavy shell, while some had collapsed owing to the shells striking the parapet on which the baulks supporting the roofs rested.
The trenches themselves were so very shallow that one could not stand upright in the blindages. General Fock, who also came to the hill to inspect the works, was very much dissatisfied. He gave orders that the trenches should be deepened to 7 feet (the ground was solid rock), and the overhead cover of the blindages strengthened by a thickness of stone sufficient to render them proof against heavy shells (3½ feet stone and 14 inches earth); that the 6- and 8-inch beams holding the roofs should be supported on 8-inch uprights; that a bomb-proof should be made for the commandant and officers, and for the sergeant-major and the non-commissioned officers; that the battery on the right flank should be made into a redoubt; that a redoubt should be hewn out of the rock on the left flank and supplied with an inner ditch, 3 feet deep, with vertical sides; and that an abattis of wire entanglements should be constructed in front of it, and bomb-proofs with iron roofs inside it.
Throughout this day wagons containing every kind of material made their way to 203 Metre Hill. Workmen swarmed on the hill like bees, but the enemy did not disturb us by a single shot.
I was glad to find that two sapper officers were placed under my orders—Major Gemmelmann, and Ensign Yermakov, a capable and practical man. I detailed the latter to supervise the work in progress on the top of 203 Metre Hill.
His idea was to resort to blasting, and I was in complete accord, as our digging tools were almost worthless in the hard rocky soil.