Not a sound of any kind.
The nearest human ten yards away—just around “the bay.”
Darkness supreme. Not even an enemy flare.
You strain your eyes over the parapet to the barbwire.
Your battalion’s life depends on your keeping awake.
Oh, the strain! Oh, the funk that is trying to grip your very soul!
Would to God something would happen! This eternal watching is fearful.
Then a rustle in the grass; a wave of movement first like the ripple you hear when a stone is “skipped” on a quiet pond; then an extra chill in the air: then a glow to the east—’Tis Dawn.
You let loose your “clip” and you fire like mad towards the Hun. Other sentries fire, and the salvo to dawn gets the whole line. Thousands of men all along the front start a strafe—a crazy, aimless strafe—which lasts for only minutes. Then, as if some great unseen General had whispered a command, men regain their “morale,” and the rifle fire quietens, and dies away.
The sun struggles up.