They took off their trousers.
There was something ludicrous, yet pitiable, in the sight of those
hefty men coming back through the communication trenches with the
tails of their shirts flapping above their bare legs, which were
plastered with a yellowish mud. Shouldering their rifles or their
spades, they trudged on grimly through two feet of water, and the
boots which they wore without socks squelched at every step with a
loud, sucking noise--"like a German drinking soup," said an officer
who preceded me.
"Why grouse?" he said, presently. "It's better than Brighton!"
It was a queer experience, this paddling through the long
communication trenches, which wound in and out like the Hampton Court
maze toward the front line, and the mine craters which made a salient
to our right, by a place called the "Tambour." Shells came whining
overhead and somewhere behind us iron doors were slamming in the sky,
with metallic bangs, as though opening and shutting in a tempest. The
sharp crack of rifle-shots showed that the snipers were busy on both
sides, and once I stood in a deep pool, with the water up to my knees,
listening to what sounded like the tap-tap-tap of invisible
blacksmiths playing a tattoo on an anvil.
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