Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/35

 New York Sun, from which a few extracts must suffice. He writes on December 8, during his fourth period of service in the trenches:

We left our camp in the woods before daybreak this morning, and marched up the hill in single file, under the winter stars.... Through openings in the woods we could see that we were marching along a high ridge, and on either hand vaporous depths and distances expanded, the darkness broken sometimes by a far light or the momentary glow of a magnesium rocket sent up from the German lines. There is something fascinating if one is stationed on sentry-duty immediately after arrival, in watching the dawn slowly illumine one of these new landscapes, from a position taken up under cover of darkness. The other section has been relieved and departs. We are given the consigne, by the preceding sentinel, and are left alone behind a mound of dirt, facing the north and the blank, perilous night. Slowly the mystery that it shrouds resolves as the grey light steals over the eastern hills. Like a photograph in the washing, its high lights and shadows come gradually forth. The light splash in the foreground becomes a ruined chateau, the grey street a demolished village.

The details come out on the hillside opposite, where the silent trenches of the enemy are hidden a few hundred metres away. We find ourselves in a woody, mountainous country, with broad horizons and streaks of mist in the valleys. Our position is excellent this time, a high crest, with open land sloping down from the trenches and plenty of barbed wire strung along immediately in front. It would be a hard task to carry such a line, and there is not much danger that the enemy will try.

With increasing daylight the sentinel takes a sheltered position, and surveys his new environment through little gaps where the mounds have been crenellated and covered with branches. Suddenly he starts as a metallic bang rings out from the woods immediately behind him. It is of the unmistakable voice of a French 75 starting the day's artillery duel. By the time the sentinel is relieved, in broad daylight, the xxxi