Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/129

Rh about listening posts, yet like nearly everything else at the front the actual thing was unlike one's preconceived notion. The shallow, unfinished appearance of the sap advertised it as a temporary work that could be abandoned at any time the German fire should make it wise. Crouched as I was, strands of the overlapping barbed wire caught at my hat, and the weeds, evidently encouraged to mask the narrow ditch, brushed against my face. The cut debouched into a small square pocket where a solitary figure rested, motionless and sombre. His rifle barrel protruded through the grass. A box of cartridges lay on a dirt shelf to his left, and, convenient to his right hand on another shelf, was a wicker basket such as old women use for their knitting. It was filled with corrugated black objects, the shape and the size of pears. They were hand grenades.

This further proof that we were actually between the lines and within hand grenade throwing distance of the Germans warned us to take our places one by one in the pocket with our guide and the sentinel as stealthily as if we were afraid of awaking a light sleeper. And we looked with all our eyes, for we knew we were seeing one of the riskiest and most unpleasant details of trench work. Here a man watches alone, listening for