Produced by Al Haines
McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD, & STEWART, LTD.
1916
for whose helpful criticism and advice, kindly consideration andunfailing courtesy to an unknown writer, a sufficiency of gratefulappreciation can never be expressed by
This book, all of which has been written at the Front within sound ofthe German guns and for the most part within shell and rifle range, isan attempt to tell something of the manner of struggle that has gone onfor months between the lines along the Western Front, and moreespecially of what lies behind and goes to the making of those curt andvague terms in the war communiqués. I think that our people at Homewill be glad to know more, and ought to know more, of what these baldphrases may actually signify, when, in the other sense, we read'between the lines.'
Of the people at Home—whom we at the Front have relied upon and lookedto more than they may know—many have helped us in heaping measure ofdeed and thought and thoughtfulness, while others may perhaps havefailed somewhat in their full duty, because, as we have been told andre-told to the point of weariness, they 'have not understood' and 'donot realise' and 'were never told.'
If this book brings anything of interest and pleasure to the first, andof understanding to the second, it will very fully have served itsdouble purpose.
'SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE' Sept. 15, 1915.
'Near Blank, on the Dash-Dot front, a section of advanced trenchchanged hands several times, finally remaining in our possession.'
For perhaps the twentieth time in half an hour the look-out man in theadvanced trench raised his head cautiously over the parapet and peeredout into the darkness. A drizzling rain made it almost impossible tosee beyond a few yards ahead, but then the German trench was not morethan fifty yards off and the space between was criss-crossed andinterlaced and a-bristle with the tangle of barb-wire defences erectedby both sides. For the twentieth time the look-out peered and twistedhis head sideways to listen, and for the twentieth time he was justlowering his head beneath the sheltering parapet when he stopped andstiffened into rigidity. There was no sound apart from the sharpcracks of the rifles near at hand and running diminuendo along thetrenches into a rising and falling stutter of reports, the frequentwhine and whistle of the more distant bullets, and the quick hiss and'zipp' of the nearer ones, all sounds so constant and normal that thelook-out paid no heed to them, put them, as it were, out of the focusof his hearing, and strained to catch the fainter but far moresignifica