The darkness clung close to the ground, the spinney between our lines was a bulk of shadow thinning out near the stars. A light breeze scampered along the floor of the trench and seemed to be chasing something. The night was raw and making for rain; at midnight when my hour of guard came to an end I went to my dug-out, the spacious construction, roofed with long wooden beams heaped with sandbags, which was built by the French in the winter season, what time men were apt to erect substantial shelters, and know their worth. The platoon sergeant stopped me at the door.
"Going to have a kip, Pat?" he asked.
"If I'm lucky," I answered.
"Your luck's dead out," said the sergeant. "You're to be one of a covering party for the Engineers. They're out to-night repairing the wire entanglements."
"Any more of the Section going out?" I asked.
"Bill's on the job," I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the vivacious Cockney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its dullest mood, explode with laughter.
Ten minutes later Bill and I, accompanied by a corporal and four other riflemen, clambered over the parapet out on to the open field. We came to the wire entanglements which ran along in front of the trench ten to fifteen yards away from the reverse slope of the parapet. The German artillery had played havoc with the wires some days prior to our occupation of the trench, the stakes had been battered down and most of the defence had been smashed to smithereens. Bombarding wire entanglements seems to be an artillery pastime; when we smash those of the Germans they reply by smashing ours, then both sides repair the damage only to start the game of demolition over again.
The line of entanglements does not run parallel with the trench it covers, although when seen from the parapet its inner stakes seem always to be about the same distance away from the nearest sandbags. But taken in relation to the trench opposite the entanglements are laid with occasional V-shaped openings narrowing towards our trench.
The enemy plan an attack. At dusk or dawn their infantry will make a charge over the open ground, raked with machine gun, howitzer, and rifle fire. Between the trenches is the beaten zone, the field of death. The moment the attacking party pull down the sandbags from the parapet, its sole aim is to get to the other side. The men become creatures of instinct, mad animals with only one desire, that is to get to the other side where there is comparative safety. They dash up to a jumble of trip wires scattered broadcast over the field and thinning out to a point, the nearest point which they reach in the enemy's direction. Trip wires are the quicksands of the beaten zone, a man floundering amidst them gets lost. The attackers realize this and the instinct which tells them of a certain amount of safety in the vicinity of an unfriendly trench urges them pell mell into the V-shaped recess that narrows towards our lines. Here the attackers are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey for the concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The narrow part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the attackers tear at the wires with their hands and get ripped flesh from bone, mutilated on the barbs in the frensied efforts to get through. The tragedy of an advance is painted red on the barbed wire entanglements.
In one point our wires had been cut clean through by a concussion shell and the entanglement looked as if it had been frozen into immobility in the midst of a riot of broken wires and shattered posts. We passed through the lane made by the shell and flopped flat to earth on the other side when a German star-shell came across to inspect us. The world between the trenches was lit up for a moment. The wires stood out clear in one glittering distortion, the spinney, full of dark racing shadows, wailed mournfully to the breeze that passed through its shrapnel-scarred branches, white as bone where their bark had been peeled away. In the mysteries of light and shade, in the threat that hangs forever over men in the trenches there was a wild fascination. I was for a moment tempted to rise up and shout across to the German trenches, I am here! No defiance would be in the shout. It was merely a momentary impulse born of adventure that intoxicates. Bill sprung to his feet suddenly, rubbing his face with a violent hand; this in full view of the enemy's trench in a light that illumined the place like a sun.