When the wind dropped at dusk or dawn a whitish fog crept out of the
ground, so that rifles were clammy to the touch and a blanket of
moisture settled on every stick in the dugouts, and nothing could be
seen through the veil of vapor to the enemy's lines, where he stayed
invisible.
He was not likely to attack on a big scale while the battlefields were
in that quagmire state. An advancing wave of men would have been
clogged in the mud after the first jump over the slimy sand-bags, and
to advance artillery was sheer impossibility. Nothing would be done on
either side but stick-in-the-mud warfare and those trench-raids and
minings which had no object except "to keep up the spirit of the men."
There was always work to do in the trenches--draining them,
strengthening their parapets, making their walls, tiling or boarding
their floorways, timbering the dugouts, and after it was done another
rainstorm or snowstorm undid most of it, and the parapets slid down,
the water poured in, and spaces were opened for German machine-gun
fire, and there was less head cover against shrapnel bullets which
mixed with the raindrops, and high explosives which smashed through
the mud.
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