Allied soldiers fortifying shell craters after an advance. From The Nations at War by Willis J. Abbot, 1918 Edition.
A startling new situation confronted the Allies in their recent advance against the Germans. They are fortifying in a concealed way chains of shell craters due to intensive artillery firing of months.
"The width of Nomansland diminishes from 1400 yards on the right, where one can sit on the parapet in shirt-sleeves, to 250 yards on the left. There are rats everywhere in numbers hitherto unknown. The C.O. had won an Open Race at a 46th Divisional Horse Show, on Yates's mare, and then gone on leave. He had seen the arrival of another draft of 95, 'awful sights, enough to break one's heart. The others were getting quite good and smart, now this crowd will put us back.' de Miremont is Acting O.C. He joined from West Africa in time to make his only acquaintance with a trench during twenty-four wet hours in reserve at Montauban Alley. He then declared that 'trench warfare is a sort of drill.' To the bewilderment of those who have lived through a year or two of it he is trying to square the fact to that idea (an idea he never gave up)."
Extract from the entry for September 18, 1916 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. The Battalion was then serving in the Somme sector.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 259, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
1916-09-18, 1916, September, Somme, Battle of the Somme, rats, trench, crater, shell crater, fortified crater
