IS THE LIEUTENANT, WHO STRAIGHTENED UP DURING THE
MOMENT THE SNAPSHOT WAS BEING TAKEN BUT WAS NOT HIT)
It was particularly interesting to watch the Belgian soldiers, who every few yards squatted placidly in the trench, short spades and trowels in hand, busily engaged in digging little pits about two feet deep in the bottom of the trench, and then scooping out little channels running to these pits. These channels would drain the surrounding yard or two of trench bottom into the pits, leaving muddy patches where a moment before three or four inches of water had stood. There the Belgian soldiers squatted like children making mud pies at the seashore, and chatted complacently in Flemish while they fought the enemy, who was only less hateful to them than the Germans. A splendid, cool, nerveless lot of men, doing their work unostentatiously but efficiently, neither dashing on the one hand nor dogged on the other, but gifted with the admirable morale of the imperturbably matter-of-fact.
Suddenly I heard an exclamation from one of the soldiers. Looking where he pointed, I saw, just beyond the Belgian front trench, a huge column of muddy water standing bolt upright against the horizon. It stood there motionless until I began to think it would remain a permanent fixture in the landscape. Then it suddenly collapsed. A Belgian shell falling short had soused down into the Y—— Canal and exploded, sending up this five-story waterspout.
It seemed a shame not to go forward into the front trench, but with the Germans lobbing six-inch bombs in there with their "mine throwers" and the artillery getting busier all the time, the Commandant thought it would be taking too great risks. So we turned and crouched along back. As we did so, it is worthy of comment, three German shells struck not far to our left at not more than half-a-minute intervals and not one of the three exploded. It was a striking example of faulty explosives.
We returned by a different trench, so that we did not have to repeat the acrobatic feat over the telephone wire. But we had a little excitement to make up for it, for, as I splashed along with a most intense crick in my bent back, one of the German projectiles, which was apparently running on perfect schedule along its overhead rails on its way toward the Belgian artillery, suddenly jumped the track and came hissing down toward us.
Simultaneously with the crash of the explosion I saw the men ahead of me passionately hugging the bottom of the trench, and I found myself on my knees and elbows, not a whit behind them in my devotion.
"That was a close one," said Captain L——.