Читать книгу Inventions of the Great War - A. Russell Bond - Страница 6

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When the French first swept the Germans back out of their trenches along the Aisne, they were astonished to find how elaborate were these underground dwellings. They found that the ground was literally honeycombed with rooms and passageways. Often the dugouts were two stories in depth and extended as much as sixty feet below the level of the ground. In fact, all along this part of the front, the Germans had a continuous underground village in which thousands of men were maintained. The officers' quarters were particularly well fitted up, and every attention was given to the comfort of their occupants. There were steel door-mats at the entrances of the quarters. The walls were boarded and even papered. The bedrooms were fitted with spring beds, chiffoniers, and wash-stands, and all the rooms were lighted with electric lamps. There were spacious quarters for the men, with regular underground mess halls and elaborate kitchens. There were power-plants to furnish steam for the operation of pumps and for the lighting-plants and for other purposes.

(C) Underwood & Underwood

Lines of Zig-Zag Trenches as viewed from an Airplane

There was a chalk formation here in which were many large natural caves. One enormous cave was said to have held thirty thousand soldiers, and in this section the Germans kept large reserve forces. By digging far into the ground, the German troops secured protection from shell-fire; in fact, the horrible noise of battle was heard only as a murmur, down in these depths. With characteristic thoroughness, the Germans built their trench system for a long stay; while the Allies, on the other hand, looked upon their trenches as merely temporary quarters, which would hold the enemy at bay until they could build up armies large enough to drive the invaders out of the country. The construction of the trenches along some parts of the battle-line was particularly difficult, because of the problem of drainage. This was especially true in Flanders, where the trenches in many cases were below water-level, and elaborate pumping-systems had to be installed to keep them dry. Some of them were concrete-lined to make them waterproof. In the early stages of the war, before the trenches were drained, the men had to stand in water for a good part of the time, and the only way they could get about at all in the miry trenches was by having "duck-boards" in them. Duck-boards are sections of wooden sidewalk such as we find in small villages in this country, consisting of a couple of rails on which crosspieces of wood are nailed. These duck-boards fairly floated in the mud.

Courtesy of "Scientific American"

French Sappers using Stethoscopes to detect the Mining Operations of the Enemy

Some of the trenches were provided with barbed wire barriers or gates calculated to halt a raiding-party if it succeeded in getting into the trench. These gates were swung up out of the way, but when lowered they were kept closed with a rather complicated system of bolts which the enemy would be unable to unfasten without some delay; and while he was struggling to get through the gate, he would be a target for the bullets of the defenders.