There have
been times when you might listen at night by the hour together and
hardly hear a rifle-shot, and when the burst of artillery fire was a
thing to be commented on. But at other times, and in some parts of the
line especially, business was run on very different lines. Then every
man in the forward firing-trench had a certain number of rounds to fire
each night, even although he had no definite target to fire at.
Magnesium flares and pistol lights were kept going almost without
ceasing, while the artillery made a regular practice of loosing off a
stated number of rounds per night. The Germans worked on fairly similar
lines, and as a result it can easily be imagined that any patrol or
reconnoitering work between the lines was apt to be exceedingly
unhealthy. Actually there were parts on the line where no feet had
pressed the ground of No Man's Land for weeks on end, unless in open
attack or counter-attack, and of these feet there were a good many that
never returned to the trench, and a good many others that did return
only to walk straight to the nearest aid-post and hospital.
The neutral ground at this period of Ainsley's patrol was a sea of mud,
broken by heaped earth and yawning shell-craters; strung about with
barbed wire entanglements, littered with equipments and with packs
which had been cut from or slipped from the shoulders of the wounded;
dotted more or less thickly with the bodies of British or German who
had fallen there and could not be reached alive by any stretcher-bearer
parties.
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