Crouched double, we waded along in single file, the Lieutenant, myself, the Commandant and his orderly. The bullets were striking some ruined farm buildings close on our left with sharp cracks. They hit the breastworks with muffled thuds and passed close over the breastwork with a kind of buzzing whistle. We paddled along till suddenly we came to a place where, for some unaccountable reason, the trench stopped, renewing itself again perhaps three or four yards further on. Across the unsheltered surface of the ground which intervened ran a slack telephone wire some two feet above the ground.
"You'd better hurry up across here," remarked the Lieutenant as he scrambled out of the trench, took a couple of strides, swung first one leg and then the other over the telephone wire, took a couple of strides more and dropped into the trench beyond.
There is not the slightest question as to the hurry in which I negotiated this obstacle. Then, to see what I must have looked like, I turned to watch the two who were following me. The Commandant, I must confess, managed to accomplish the feat in a fashion not wholly destitute of dignity. But the way his orderly bounded out of the trench, hurdled the telephone wire and with one lithe leap descended upon us in the other trench was a sight for sore eyes. It certainly must have drawn a chuckle from the German sharpshooters witnessing it through their telescopic sights.
A hundred yards or so further on we came to a halt at an angle in the communication trench from which could be had a good view of the front.
Lifting my head cautiously till my eyes were just above the edge of the rampart, I could see some 250 yards ahead the chocolate-colored back of the Belgian front trench. For where the chalky soil of Champagne makes the trenches there very white in color, the boggy soil of Belgium is a rich brown.
Beyond the Belgian front trench ran a line of tall trees; beyond the line of trees again ran another brown line.
"That's the German front line, I suppose?" I said to the Lieutenant.
"No, that's their second line you're looking at. Raise your head a little more, and right over the top of our front-line trenches you'll see their front line."
I craned my neck, and, sure enough, another brown line hove into view apparently only a few yards ahead of the Belgian front line, with the usual barbed-wire tangle in front of it.