But what matters the rain! We have spread
ourselves out on the ground. Now that our backs and limbs rest in
the yielding mud, we are so comfortable that we are unconcerned
about the rain that pricks our faces and drives through to our
flesh, indifferent to the saturation of the bed that contains us.
But we get hardly time enough to draw breath. They are not so
imprudent as to let us bury ourselves in sleep. We must set
ourselves to incessant labor. It is two o'clock of the morning; in
four hours more it will be too light for us to stay here. There is
not a minute to lose.
"Every man," they say to us, "must dig five feet in length, two and
a half feet in width, and two and three-quarter feet in depth. That
makes fifteen feet in length for each team. And I advise you to get
into it; the sooner it's done, the sooner you'll leave."
We know the pious claptrap. It is not recorded in the annals of the
regiment that a trenching fatigue-party ever once got away before
the moment when it became absolutely necessary to quit the
neighborhood if they were not to be seen, marked and destroyed along
with the work of their hands.
We murmur, "Yes, yes--all right; it's not worth saying. Go easy."
But everybody applies himself to the job courageously, except for
some invincible sleepers whose nap will involve them later in
superhuman efforts.
We attack the first layer of the new line--little mounds of earth,
stringy with grass.
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