Here's a bit from our Flame Thrower remembering his transfer to our unit,

Alright looks like I am starting a journal I guess, better than spending the night of my first day in the 503rd without sleep. I’ve always had issues with that, sometimes I sleep fine, other time sometimes I don’t even sleep. Like tonight, not too many people are up and in an hour or two I am going on a recon mission to the demolished town in no mans land. Apparently we have reason to suspect a german forward base is going to be made there I guess. Why I of all people am getting sent is a little bit of a mystery but sure if things go wrong I guess a flamethrower would be helpful. Sure if it turns out this forward base is the beginning of another trench. In addition to being the only person crazy enough to go into battle with a flamethrower I am also apparently the ONLY Irishmen. A little sad but I can’t bring myself to care that much, if there was anymore of people like me I have no doubt in my mind we would be leading an assault directly into several machine guns like last time. The british think of everything as expendable except themselves, hideous way of thinking about it. Bastards, but I can’t blame them too much. I can still hate them though.

Well first of all there used to be an actual group of men with flamethrowers once upon a time, until our CO. threw us at the German trenches at night one time to “soften” the resistance for the assault the next day. I think he just wanted us dead. Because thats what happened to the other five or so guys. Damn guns went straight through em. I was lucky I got caught in some barbed wire way back where they couldn’t see me. Now each one of us was given an asbestos blanket to wrap around our packs, my old LT was at least kind enough for those. I needed proof for my claims otherwise they would think I simply walked back and let them die. It took me some time, I didn’t want to move too much with my sixty pound pack I’d pretty much hand them my skull on gold platter. I’m glad my luck is still going strong, the Fritz didn’t even notice I existed. So I snuck to each one of my dead squadmates and took the blanket and wrapped it around different parts of myself, I ended up looking like a damn fool. Wrapped in that stuff made it unbearably hot and uncomfortable. I slowly made my way back to the trenches when my luck had run dry. Several riflemen opened up fire at me, I ran faster than I ever thought was possible. In no way did I want my pack exposed to them, the brits don’t like giving us new equipment as it is. It only took a few minutes to get back, the Machine gunners almost shot at me because they couldn’t tell if I was even human. I had to yell at them my name and where I was stationed at least five times.

So when I finally got back in I gave my report of the failed mission and went to my bunk. Turns out that the bullet that had my name on it was stopped by my squad mates blankets. I haven't been seen without those blankets since really. Sure there hot and uncomfortable, but as long as I’m wearing em I feel like I could march into the Germans Trenches and torch the lot of em. But I know that won’t happen. Well thats all that really happened for a few days until my LT told me to get my stuff and report to the 503rd down in the Abbey. I did just that, no complaint. I never really liked anyone there, I am more of the loner type. No use getting to know them if they are just gonna die. I remember thinking to myself how the 503rd wouldn’t any different to this troop.

Boy was I wrong, my goodness was I so wrong. I walk in and the first American I see is toting a small pump action canon. When i say small I mean small for a canon, not for a rifle. The thing was impressive and frankly I would not like to be on the end of that monster. He was just cleanin the thing like it was his babe. If I had something like that I would do much the same. But anyways, I went and reported to my new LT. the man was sitting in the most posh quarters I had ever seen. My god, here in this hole he managed to best my ma’s home in ireland. Now heres the kicker the man brings himself an honest to god elephant gun to the battle. Now in no way is that pussy footin around, first man in the charge getting shot with that is going to have the four other behind him with holes in em. He told me two things I didn’t expect to hear “I’m glad to have you here” and “Don’t tell anyone why you eat better than everyone else.” I have never had a harder time keeping a straight face in front of a commanding officer in my life, life seemed like it was turning up. Instead of face down in the dirt.

If I wasn’t completely loyal than after that first meal I would die for just about every man in the 503rd, even the frenchmen we still had. All seven or so of em. Why we had em didn’t bother me that much, I didn’t really care to ask. Now you see the Abbey used to be sorta like hell, with Jerry hill spewing down machinegun fire every once in awhile just to fuck with people. Until it kinda erupted into a giant explosion and it ceased to exist. Everyone heard it, whoever had the idea to turn a hill into a crater to deal with a few germans is fine by me right now. I like spending my time not being shot. Well it’s time for me to get to work, that American with the Canon is calling me. Looks like I am going for my first mission with these people.

On the events of October 1916, the first two weeks.

I am afraid that few of the men I served with have been very forthcoming in providing any written stories or even reports from the points before this. And since a good many men died, there is little which they could add now except what they left behind. The families are rarely eager to discuss the writing which was sent to them and finding any official reports is something which future generations will probably have better luck than I have had thus far; so what I continue to provide is my perspective ( mostly underground) and that of the people who were able and willing to add to it.

The October weather was very good to us, in fact I cannot remember it raining before the first two attacks, the winds were mild to fair which was good because it protected us from the damned gas attacks. Usually the winds were in our favor, there were atleast two occasions when they shifted and the damned gas man set upon us with poisons and chemicals.

We had managed to keep everything moving along fairly well despite having less than half the men we needed. This was both due to the fact that England is slow to deliver and quick to ask more of you, we had opted to keep a number of men "on the books" until it was proved they were dead. More food and supplies would show up for them until they eventually came home again or were proved dead and we were forced to report it. Men go missing all the time, it's nothing new to the army to have men gone a week in a battle field and turn up when things settled down enough and it was a lot of trouble to make a man "not dead" once the army had decided he was dead. There were several times men were in battle and wounded or simply lost in the confusion for days and returned to our unit after they had gotten medical care.

Now our task was one of tunneling, and listening to the Germans digging. I had great plans for all of this and every day when men weren't being squandered in the trenches we had them all working on deepening our tunnels for I had decided that crawling was both wasting men's time while they went about their jobs and making our unit look like a joke at parades which we were expected weekly to attend. I had just about finished our present task which was to create a proper base for our men to sleep and work in at the end of Sept, we were still fairly well off for man power and had managed to borrow some men in order to complete my project. The unit was to sleep in what was carefully redesigned to resemble "A proper barracks" as the English would know it.

I had envisioned four separate rooms for fifty men each with a central set of rooms / hall way which they were on opposing sides of. The rooms were laid out so that a man had to walk a serpentine walkway down underground to the level of the sleeping spaces. Then he would enter into a small "mud room" which served as an air lock to protect from chemical weapons attacks as well as explosives and marauding German troopers who might take the trenches. After the mud room they'd enter a second chamber which had three doorways; left / right / and middle. The first two were for the barracks sections, and from here those men could fire into the "mud room" through firing ports in the walls while locking the door from this inside track. After about ten feet the middle door could be opened and it had an identical set up, this was repeated several times. Those next two doors on the sides were for the officer's rooms who dealt with the men directly, then in the section afterwards was another barracks. At some point there were two doors which were later made the toilets for the men, we had instituted a policy where each man had a bucket and it was his to use and keep clean. As a result the instances of sick calls went down rapidly which made everyone happy it also kept the terrible smells down ( I have no sense of smell, but I"m told it was over powering when we arrived). Also it helped us wage war against the rats who's evils I have already informed you of.

Now at the back of our new layout was an "emergency exit" or the back door; and rapidly we found ourselves using it more and more to get cargo in and out of the tunnels. The problem was mainly that even though we had a truck, there wasn't anywhere secure beyond the small hole which we had carved out and sand bagged and tarped for our beloved ( filthy wreck) of a french truck. Late one night while I was given the less then enviable position of night guards for the back door ( They shoot you if you fall asleep) and it's also a place likely to get his by German artillery, mortars and the damned airplanes. I saw something coming towards us on the even more dubious "road to Paris" which was in fact the muddy filth path the trucks took supplies in on when they deemed to supply us at all. Now the problem is; they rarely supply us and when they do someone runs a message down here and we have to go get it from somewhere else.

To see lights approaching my position; even ones which were very dim were a clue to the enemy something was coming and somewhere there were German's sighting in guns or god save us their artillery. The lights became more and more numerous to a point I could see dozens of them and then the rumble of gas engines told me there were trucks and a good many of them coming towards me. I braced myself for whatever bad news was about to arrive and the yet unknown danger which was certainly to follow with them. What happened next was almost comical if it weren't so soon to be deeply depressing for all concerned with it. The first trucks stopped and out came a dashing officer in the Republic's finest uniform. Behind him were almost a dozen more finely clad men who were first timer's to the battle field. They were smoking and talking to each other in French.

I was the only person nearby they moved to me quickly, after several confused moments I managed to get enough out of them that this was a newly trained division from the Republic of France's infantry training grounds. They had been sent for a secret mission to the front lines here and somewhere along the way the drivers became confused over exactly where they were supposed to be taking up station. The trucks were filled with men, nearly a thousand or so of them and all of their equipment and supplies. This was exactly what I had been asking for and wasted no time getting them to kill all the lights after explaining the German's were only three hundred yards away from us. I showed them down to our modest situation and quickly explained that no one had told us they were coming, so I did not have nearly enough room for all the men but that I could house the officers right away. Then showing them to back to the place where our truck was housed and the "truck tunnel" which I was trying to get established for removal of dirts and soils I hit upon an idea which was one of my best. I took them down into a section of tunnel which was largely unused at the time and explained that this was all England had to offer France for sleeping quarters. They were displeased to say the least of it, but then I mentioned that we had an a supply of digging supplies and timbers, were the enlisted French men to spend say eight hours I could help them create an entire facility which could house them and serve as a head quarters for their entire force while safe and snug away from any German spies looking over the no-man's land.

They'd quickly agreed to this prospect and we set about getting all the French infantry into lines of bucket brigades to dispose of the soils removed while others dug away at the wall with buckets and shovels and picks. My officers awoke to the commotion of all of this and were completely stunned to find the place swamped with "frogs" as the Brits often called them. I explained this was some kind of "gift" from high command and we were ordered to keep them underground until further notice. By the end of the first day we had cleared a sufficient space for a thousand men, their supplies. The whole area was like a cellar, and it was quickly dubbed "The wine and cheese cellar", to the English speaking members of the group. Now the French were a very amiable lot, for you see these men were largely conscripts an not too keen on their lot here at the front. As a result I could ask nearly any reasonable tasks of them and they'd gladly take them on to keep from being posted to the wall. Though it turned out we were not allowed to post them anywhere, and were allowed to make use of their numbers to help make up for inefficiencies in English infantry and labor underground.

During their brief time with us our entire facilities and infrastructure underwent a marvelous expansion to which many if not all of our other projects became realities as a result of this work. Also we learned that the French were great cooks, skilled craftsmen and other useful people to have about the place. It was also terribly true that these men were only in the barest sense of the word "soldiers"; for they had little training and no veterans or senior leadership with practical application of their duties. And they lived in daily dread of being told they were being sent over the wall, every day some unit had the job to go over and repair the wires at night or spy on the enemy or make a massed attack. None of these were good jobs. So we tried to keep their minds off of it all by sending them along with the French speaking members of our unit to perform daily tasks like listening posts, guard duties and labor for excavation projects.

It should also be said the despite everything, France was very good at feeding their men, or more accurately France was better about it than England was a good deal of the time. This meant that the two groups of soldiers quickly fell into the habit of trading food and other consumable items ( smokes, tea and coffee) between each other.

One fateful morning too soon after their arrival orders arrived from Paris, their luck had run out and our new friends were going to be sent over the wall the following night. Now in order to keep everyone as confused as possible; this was the acting head quarters but the French had been taken the day or so before and dispersed among other English units. Nearly all of their supplies were kept with us and their officers stayed here but the regular men were off in a great many places. There went several hours of sending the messages along to the poor bastards who'd arrive here to pickup their last meal and supplies before an attack which everyone knew was doomed to failure.

That night we doubled the guards at all stations, the listening posts awaited the possible attack by German sappers who might break through any time. At the appointed hour, just before dawn after a several hour artillery barrage to give the German commanders every warning we were about to attack them there came a great shout as the brave men climbed up onto the destroyed earth of the no-man's land and began walking their way through the hip deep mud, house sized craters and tangled webs of barbed wire. They chanted battle songs and marched into the grip of German machine guns who waited for them with careful patience after two years of practice on these killing fields. They cleared the distance and passed through waves of machine gun fire and artillery strikes before jumping into the trenches. Here is the greatest show of bravery, the men who had walked through the death and explosions of those men all around them then willingly hurled themselves into a hole in the ground filled by hundreds of Germans carrying short swords on the ends of rifles. Many men were killed before they even got into the trenches, others were killed terribly as they fought for every inch of ground that the German's held.

In some areas the Germans were overwhelmed and the French began to hold a section, reinforce the position and then finally push into another one. The battle raged for almost two hours, until nearly every last Frenchman was killed, very few of them managed to escape back towards our lines and the sound of their fighting and deaths were heard throughout the morning. At some point the unofficial battle ended and both sides sent out peace signs so that the wounded and dead could be removed from the field of battle. I and most of my unit volunteered, we wanted to bring everyone back who was alive and get them aid. We also wanted to return the dead to be given proper graves. There was another motive too; the French were issued good rifles and their officers had automatic pistols which were very, extremely valuable. See the English never understood that in confined spaces a large rifle isn't any good, but a small pistol with a lot of shots is just what we needed. Dead men don't need their guns, and when we picked up a dead or wounded man we always brought his kit back with him lest the German's take it as a prize themselves.

After everything was said and done we managed to "Keep on" seven of France's brave sons who were fit for duty but had nothing to return to besides a new unit and certain death. At our posting they were treated like every other soldier and given regular duties every day. They were among the best men we had at that position for a long time.

The old saying about an eye for an eye was coined just for this war, and it was commonly known the next three days were going to give us a counter attack like pure hell.

Figures related to construction of tunnels

Submitted by “American number One”

We have just over one thousand, four hundred yards of underground facilities dug out as of the beginning of October 1916. This does not include living quarters, storage spaces or above ground conditions such as trenches. They will be added to this document at a later point in order to complete the estimations of which I am compiling now.

First it must be said that the military unit(s) which are responsible for the current projects have done their utmost to maintain all existing structures while improving them to more acceptable levels for the kind of duties they have been tasked to do while attempting to keep up with an ever changing and aggressive set of new projects delivered to them. The men involved have been worked beyond their recommended levels in the face of little or no proper reinforcement of troops trained in our present tactics and tools. Despite weekly requests for this to change we have only received token troop additions who were largely wiped out or badly wounded in the great battle which took place only a short time ago. At present I believe we are at or below half strength in terms of expected man power and well below what we actually need to be an effective unit for our task while expected to maintain combat readiness for above ground operations  The fact we were issued Chinese laborers speaks a great deal to the facts I am going to present here for your to read, and if they are representative of their people I should like to you send me all of the Chinese you can as they are the hardest working people I've ever seen. Which is no discredit to the British troops, but most of them are not miners, and fewer still are soldiers by trade which makes them less than ideal for underground construction and soldiering.

It is my belief that we need one soldier in the trenches every five yards, replaced every eight hours. And underground I must have without fail a minimum of sixty men for sentry duties and listening posts, on every occasion we have been short men and supplies to do this and the German's have exploited it with an alarming degree of ability. On the occasions when we were fully manned and the German's attacked the battles were hard fought to a point of nearly mutual losses. The use of what you English call “unsanctioned or personal firearms” has always been the factor which tipped victory in the favor of our little outpost. But since these weapons are purchased by the soldier out of pocket and shipped at great expense from my home country ( the United States of America) it is extremely time consuming to gain additional supplies, parts or god forbid ammunition. Also the massive increase in the number of hand guns; now being issued to all men underground while on duty has played a critical role in keeping the Hun from breaking through when they had surprise and numbers in their favor. However the continual lack of reliable supplies for ammunition despite our purchasing American guns in English calibers has become an issue for those who are charged with holding at all costs; or blowing their tunnels with explosives. The demolition of a tunnel is a constant threat to us as they are slow and expensive to construct, once blown we have lost the initiative and there is a risk the Germans will exploit our lost ground and expand their operations in the area. We also cannot remove our own men from the tunnel once it is declared “over run”. No matter how this is seen in terms of man power loss the impact it has on the moral of men in the unit when they are ordered to blow up a passage way filled by Germans and their own friends in this unit has a profound impact upon their work in the weeks which follow. Recently we suffered several situations in which tunnels were required to be blown up, or where men charged into them hoping to hold back attackers, and only two of the men have survived each of these; myself being one.

I am constantly reminded whenever I submitted reports that this is a war, also I am informed that my requests seem overly generous in their quantities and materials for the tasks which our unit has been given to complete. This is a remarkable thing to be told, at no point have I observed what I would term a war. Not a proper war atleast, in America when we go to war each man is issued a weapon for his task and equipment to carry it out. When men decide to carry their own weapons it is seen as a sign of supreme capablity that he has given up the weapon issued to him in favor of one which he will have exceptional skills in using. This frees up the rifle he was isued for some other soul who did not own his own fire arms.

When an American carries his personal weapons he can walk into the Quarter Master's and show the weapon, then get the supplies he needs. There isn't any question about why some private carries a pistol and a shot gun, he has it because he needed it. If he asks for a shovel or a blanket no one feels the need to ask him to fill out paperwork for being without something he “might have been issued” at some point.

If a general in the United States were told to take and hold a position, he would look at the situation and then consult his under officer's. They would see who among their serving men were qualified to judge the situation locally and from there a plan is developed which will maximize the effectiveness of the troops at hand. The General would present the mission, the under officers would take up their tasks and local men are allowed to fight how / where on the field they are best able to do so.

In England's army: Someone ( I don't know who) forms a plan which works as follows,

1 Take less than half as many men as you might think are needed to do a job, prepare the enemy for days or months with repeated and formulaic attacks so identical as to render dates on orders completely needless.

2 Refuse to supply the troops at hand with any/all supplies they are screaming for on a daily basis and then tell them hours before hand it's their turn to climb over the walls.

3 Wait for the reports to come back of another failed series of attacks and countless thousands of good young lads killed for no reason at all.

Troops are sent over the wall regardless of their skill sets, cavalry units are deployed to trenches and engineers are ordered out of their positions to fill the holes in the infantry. The infantry are sent to make wave after wave of suicidal attacks. I have seen cooks and medics firing weapons picked up off of dead soldiers because there weren't enough trained men left to defend a position. I have seen Chinese men fend off Germany's best infantry units with nothing more than lengths of wood and hand tools. The cost to our man power is high and the loss of time is becoming very critical in nature, the materials lost are slow to be replaced on top of everything else.

If our mission is to be successful we need to be allowed to pursue the single task for which the unit was created and to which we are greatly desirous to complete. This unit needs to be removed from the roles of “Infantry” and seen as little more than extra troops to fill in the holes after another disaster takes the limited men present and throws them away.

We cannot remain effective while our forces are split between the task we have and serving as back up soldiers. We will not be able to complete the mission on time if we do not receive rapid replenishment of soldiers and laborers and qualified persons for mission specific skilled positions.

I have completed and submitted before lists of men I feel are very important to completing the projects with which we have been assigned, I will do it again for the sake of making a complete report of all things needed.

Now back to the reason we're all here, or why I'm here and what you can do to help me get out of this stinking hole while you declare victory or whatever it is you'll do when this is all over. These numbers I am about to give are absolute minimums we require. If less is provided it will result in delays or a complete shut down of projects. This mission cannot not be completed without required materials and timely deliveries, the team will not attempt to make do with insufficient or unacceptable substitutions as that would only cause tragic failures from which there would be no recovery.

I am providing a sample of existing material requirements per Ten Meter lengths, for the ease or the reader I am treating Meters / Yards as identical units of measure. However we know the difference actually and the exact figures are available in my office for MOD records after the war if they so desire.

20 8in x8in x10ft Beams (Primary supports)

36 2in x6in x10ft boards, ( the Roof )

36 2in x4in x10ft boards (cross braces )

These are the absolute min required to hold a tunnel up. Following are other materials which are essensial to maintaining our current project's viability and the unit's best possible progress.

33ft electrical wire for lights

2 light sockets

3 sections of 10ft long, 1in Outside diameter pipe. ( to pump clean air into tunnels)

3 sections of 10ft long, 1in Outside diameter pipe. ( to protect telephone and electric cables)

3 sections of 10ft long, 4in Outside diameter pipe. ( For removal of the water )

3 ( 55gal) steel drums, sunk into the floors to act as sumps for water removal.

300 square feet of “Chicken / pig / chain link” fencing to help keep sand bags upright on walls.

All of his weighs about one and a half tons, now to complete all our tunnels to acceptable levels multiply this by One Hundred and Forty Two times. According to common estimations I have from the work done and the regular work loads. This does not include the special project for which I will provide a separate document explaining it's requirements and time table.

The goods and materials which I have been given to use thus far are nearly spent in most cases and will require replacement in order to maintain our current pace of construction. It is also worth noting that while our detractors have claimed we do not “need” the quantities of materials we ask for it was those materials on hand which allowed us to replace all sections damaged by the German attack.

I am now at a stage where we can begin our glorious task, provided that I have the man power and the materials delivered regularly. It will not be enough to simply have more man power than I need, nor will an excess of materials and insufficient man power. I must have both in the required amounts on time or we are lost. If I have an excess of materials, they will be lost at the depot (stolen), or we will have no where to keep them safe and secure underground when they arrive. If I am required to leave them on he surface they become a target for German artillery, while the Kaiser's intelligence service will doubtless begin to piece together what it is I am trying to do here. And of course materials will go missing (more theft). If the German can see what is going on, he will reproduce it and attempt to beat us at our own games. For the record, the German is exceedingly good at this and if it were not for some good old “American Know how” I am sure this whole section would be another unfortunate page in military history.

While we are talking about the Americans, I have noticed there is an unofficial segratation among the officers, the none commissioned officers and the enlisted men which goes beyond the simple chain of command. There are units here from entire villages, counties and so on. When a military unit is wiped out you have lost dozens of men and boys from a single community, in addition to your decimation of localized youth it means that the units are extremely insular in nature. A new arrival is treated like someone who's wandered into the wrong apartment during a holiday, they are rarely welcomed by the old hands and are often given the worst possible positions that the unit has to take up.

These situations are extremely detramentle to the efficiency of units which are in mortal danger of extinction should they fail to gain and accept new members. Our own unit is now overwhelmingly non-English to a point that only the officers remain as the English born. Nearly all the enlisted men are either Americans or from distant colonies but lack their own leadership and as a result we have break downs in communication between officers born and raised to a cultural norm of military service which the non-English men frequently cannot understand and will be unable or unwilling to follow. It is not enough to simply tell men to throw away their lives “For King and Country”, most of these men have never seen the King, they do not benefit from the Grand Empire, and are here largely from the stories of adventure and glory or in some cases conscription. The idea that everyman is ready to die for the King and the Empire is entirely false, they want to live every single man. The idea you might need to die is one they resign themselves to, but do not seek or hope for.

When the officer's try to bolster them with stories of glorious death it only serves to cause men too closely acquainted with a situation's terrible truth to form discontent and resentment. Soon after will follow subversion or disregard for orders which they feel to be unreasonable and then outright mutiny. I have only met the French army a few times but many know they march to their certain deaths for no gain at all. If there was a way out, I know they ( individuals) will soon take it, if the French have defections, surrenders or mutiny the Colonial soldiers and finally the English farm boys will soon follow and that's all there is to it.

On the subject of man power, other than the sixty men per shift I'd need to staff the listening posts and serve as security in the tunnels ( a total of roughly one hundred and twenty men total). We will need about two hundred additional men for underground duties with a hope to have a total of three hundred infantry total. We will also need proportional increases in support persons and logistics which upto now have been handled almost entirely in an organic manor. If all of these units can be supplied within a fortnight I can have them working on the primary and secondary mission parameters by the the second week of their arrival. And will still possibly make the six months or less timeline. I cannot however stress enough the need for nearly complete autonomy and the need to maintain a steady stream of supplies throughout the course of our actions here.  

A letter from the Photographer

Dear Captain,
You will find enclosed 6 photographs I have taken of the crystal and other wonders in the cavern. Due to the reflective and refractive nature of the crystal, it was very challenging to take photographs and have them be decipherable as anything more than light. However between diligent photography, some clever developing, and shear number of photographs I have managed to produce the enclosed photos. The first is a sample of the crystal I took back with me to HQ so I could photograph it in better lighting, curiously I found an ant enclosed in one of the crystals. The second photograph I took was of a fish I managed to catch which I also took with me back to HQ. The third is of a fantastic specimen of crystal no less than 8 feet tall, the nature of the conditions caused the crystalline structure to be particularly apparent. The fourth picture is of the gorgon inscription over the inlet tunnel. The fifth picture Is of a particularly plain crystal that with proper lighting I was able to discern something inside, I have provided a second copy of the fifth picture that I have done some retouching to to make what I believe I saw more apparent.
I hope these pictures find you in good health and I hope that I can do more work for you in the future.

Sincerely, George H. Dennison, Company photographer

P.S. If you would put in a good word for me with the Colonel I am hoping to convince him to requisition a more modern camera for me.

DUKE TO VISIT FRONTLINES!

Hastings Russell, the 12th Duke of Bedford Plans to visit the now famous “London Trench” saying “Along with bringing them the accolades and regards of this nation, many of my Colleagues have awards and commendations to units on the frontline that I will be delivering in their name.” When asked Why he chose to visit “London Trench” he said “Too often we let the great battles such as The Somme over shadow the heroic efforts of those on the secondary fronts.” Russell continued saying that he would tour the trench with Colonel Winston J. Edinburgh III and was planning to make a personal visit to his own 503RD Sappers.

( clipping from British News Paper October 1916 and sent in by Cam Frisby).

Colonies and Allies come together to protect “London Trench”

The Hun launched an attack on “London Trench” In northern France. At 8:00 in the evening on Saturday October 5^th when many soldiers were given early rest so they could be in church at dawn, The Hun launched a surprise attack after bombing “London Trench” for hours with Artillery, Incendiaries, and Mustard gas, German commanders ordered a mass suicide charge on “London Trench” captured documents reveal that “German commanders are willing to sacrifice any number of soldiers, civilians, or land just to see ‘London Trench’ destroyed.” However steadfast in their duty, British soldiers and their allies repelled the attack. This reporter would like to highlight The Duke of Bedford’s own 503RD Sapper Regiment. During the German attack The 503RD Sappers were risking their lives to rebuild a French Church in No Man’s Land, not only did they protect the Church, The detachment of soldiers at the Church managed to recapture much of “London Trench”. The 503RD is comprised of loyal soldiers from Great Britain, Her Colonies, and her Allies. Englishmen, Scots, Irish, Aussies, Frenchmen, The Welsh, Even loyal Americans  fight together with unity to be one of the most successful units on the line. Colonel Winston J Edinburgh III Gave them high regards saying “[The 503RD] Have proven that, When properly motivated and led, a colonial soldier can fight above and beyond the call of duty” During the initial wave alone, the 503Rd directly credited with 79 kills, and capturing 54 Germans. Many of the Germans were quoted as saying “We would rather be prisoners of the British than Slaves to the Kaiser.”

(clipping from British News Paper October of 1916, submitted by Cam Frisby).

A letter from our Doctor at the time to some of his fellows

A letter from our Doctor at the time to some of his fellows, probably late September or early October.

"Greetings members and associates of the Organization.

I write to you from my current assignment with the British Royal Army, Stationed on the French front. As you know my primary assignment is investigating the plot behind this terrible war. That is who or whom wishes to raise these poor fallen souls, and how and for what purpose do they do this.

My secondary assignment is the investigation into the recent increase of those cursed with second life. In these past years I have as of yet been unsuccessful in uncovering why this is happening, but I believe I am making progress! Within the unit I have recently been assigned to there was an individual that I believe was afflicted with second life. This individual showed some of the known signs, but I was not able to interview or test the individual as they were captured on a night reconnoiter mission.

At this time I have found no evidence that would implicate the “Allies” local military being involved, or even aware that this grave plot may exist! In my investigation of both the trench aid stations, and the nearest hospital all I have found are poorly trained and under supplied teams. I can not speak for the German Army as I have as of yet been able to investigate their medico organization, or hear from the other “Doctor's” placed in the German lines.

Though on a recent night raid I witnessed a German solder looting a fallen solder from the unit, when he retrieved what appeared to be a small gem from a pocket, his immediate reaction was to drop said gem and take aim at the Head. I incapacitated the German with a well aimed shot, but before I could secure him or the gem the area was incinerated by the flame trooper of our unit leaving nothing behind.

Enclosed with this letter is a greenish gem I had found while digging. I believe may be similar to the gem from the raid, as the solder with the gem had gotten lost in the tunnels the unit has been constructing.

With regards,
The English Doctor."

September of that year.

Concerning the events of September that year.

     Shortly after arriving the Americans among the group decided that the situation was unacceptable, and quickly put forwards a plan of "Improvement and expansion". The state of the sleeping spaces as well as the tunnels themselves were painfully under maintained, as well as completely haphazard in their construction and layout. It was then that a plan was drawn up, a proper plan with careful attention paid to security and the many dangers which faced us. At some point we will have to attach some photos which were taken of various aspects and events but that is for a latter point in time. It took several weeks to dig out and then to shore up the many sections which were being constructed. Being men of hope and daring; we built the rooms to suit about two hundred soldiers with their own bunks even though we only had about fifty men. I had spared nothing in the layout of this facility based on what I thought we'd need. the rooms were laid mirror opposites with a central corridor as their mutual entry point, and each having several layers of locking doors and reinforced walls to retard the advance of enemy forces while stopping explosives from doing damage to more than a single section per hit.
      Now the materials were a bit hard to get, for you see I based my numbers for material requirements on my working on classes at the Colorado school of mines and estimates for building homes. We might have also over estimated our total required goods abit too. But finally it was done, and we all had proper living conditions; or that's what it seemed like. There were so many damned rats we began to classify them as if they were ships! Everything from corvettes and tenders to First Rate Battle ships, and very rarely Dreadnoughts. These were both making our spaces filthy, and undermining the constructions by chewing away at the lumber we had so painstakingly cut and placed. We began a program of making false floors and placing pits with buckets or steel drums under the floors with food in them. These were to collect rats and them remove them from the areas several times a day. This was not a popular job for anyone and frequently used as a punishment for minor offences among the enlisted men.
     Now we realized very quickly the jolly old England wasn't giving two bleeding you-know-whats; about our situation or the lack of real supplies we needed and were not getting. So we set up a sort of game with the English army and their various representatives which although not legal were very effective in getting what we needed. I will point out that unlike many officers who were known by their men, or reported by the papers we did not seek to swindle the government out of materials and everything asked for was actually something which had a purpose. The fact that we occasionally over estimated the materials, man power or pay required for various tasks was simply an overbid because we knew they'd short us on whatever we asked for. Just like any good contractor I padded the accounts and when we needed extra there was something stashed away to hold us over while the goods were late in delivery. Quickly we realized too that it was too dangerous and tedious to bring in supplies on horse wagons and single trucks over the flat ground in daylight. So we put ourselves to building a sunken road almost seventy yards long and deep / wide enough for a large cargo truck could move freely without Germans shooting at it.
      One of the next things we did was go into town and buy up the first truck we could find, it was a terrible old machine which looked to be twice as old as is physically possible. But it ran ( sort of) and so we got into it and quickly put it to use moving supplies to aid our course and missions. Not long after we realized something more: The British were terrible about supplies, frankly I could order supplies from Sears and Roebuck in the United States of America ( still neutral then) and have them shipped to France via American cargo ships before London could manage to send us stuff. Now there are two problems with this; we had to pay for the goods in cash ( to get the best deals) and there were no promises England would pay us back for it later. So we did what all men do when they need something they can't afford; we pooled our money upto about a thousand pound Stirling and mailed it off fastest mail possible. Confirmation was returned very quickly there after and we ordered about three tons of supplies; mostly consumables of food and personal supplies also included a complete General Motors truck, a bath tub and some other items out of their outstanding selection of personal firearms and gun supplies. Unfortunately by this time there were a lot of things being shipped back to Europe and we wound up waiting more than a month and a half for most of it and some of it only arrived well after two months had passed.
   However, the arrival of the shotguns, pistols and ammunition was very speedy and we were thankful for it soon enough. The Germans had an extensive program of tunneling and countering out tunnels, soon we were fighting them inside the cramped conditions and poor lighting. The use of pistols and shotguns was I think one of the reasons we did so well. Rifles are not suitable for tunnels but a a scatter gun and a repeating pistol are.
     Then with some down time from German attacks stopped we set up our next great plan, we began digging up the existing tunnels until they were nearly two yards by two yards. Enough room for men to stand and walk comfortably around in them. The timbers were always built to five times the recommended strength needed; and that saved us when the German started throwing bombs through his holes at us. Now we had no idea how much distance there was underground, but there was a lot of it and it took ages for you to crawl to your destinations. As a result we set to measuring it out, and the number was Point eight miles; or eight tenths of a mile. This was dug with buckets and hand at a rate of seven cubic yards per man, per day. I leave you to figure out how many man hours were spent at that and what it must have been like.
    Here and there we got some new people but never as many as I asked for and increasingly I began to worry that this was not just a purgatory position but one where every level of command was wildly apathetic or incompetent to a degree which was going to get us all killed. And that was not acceptable. So we began sending daily requests for supplies each time adding to the stuff I was asking for until I hoped we'd be buried in materials and could get about doing everything.
     The tunnels were not fully expanded until well after two months I'm afraid attacks, counter attacks and other moronics got into the way of my planning. However we quickly became the unit who was known for having what needed getting and for fixing things which were problematic.
   During this time "American Number One" and "Irish Fire" helped lead attacks nearly every other night against the Germans until we got almost two weeks without night time surface attacks by their fabled storm troopers. Irish fire was addicted to asbestos, he believed it saved his life, and he was also the sneakiest damned man to wear his body weight in explosive death you'll ever meet. In several attacks they flanked Germans, crept up on them and took prisoners without being seen. Several other times they dismantled German mines and booby traps. Then replaced those with their own in nearby locations. Not all their missions were as successful however and on several occasions there were troopers wounded or killed who came with them. Upto this point none of them had handed over anything in the way of official reports, but I do know that between them they killed or wounded almost seventy Storm troopers in night time raids, with no ideas about how many were killed or injured by these explosives left behind. Now after nearly a month on station we also picked up some additional people with some of the most eclectic and dubious of skill sets and personal stories I'd ever heard of. Two dwarves; one a miner from "somewhere" and another who was a catholic priest of all things. He was sent here to keep the spirit of the men up as best he could, and soon enough we were working on constructing a small room to serve as a church for him. Now the first dwarf was a man born to his tasks, and soon enough we realized the key to happiness was to give him directions and leave him to it, then come back and scoop up the dirt he left behind. That man was a boring machine underground, and several times his hands saved our lives as well as kept the Germans in fear for their lives.
     Several times the remains of "Jerry Hill" (later renamed "The Alamo") were fought over and retaken from the night time predations of the Germans. Finally we gave up on that and simply tunneled under it, finding out our German counter parts had done the same, a short and bloody battle waged until we burned them out and bombed the tunnels they'd left behind. That hill became the near total focal point for our unit's safety and hazards the rest of our days at this post.

     Now one night the damnedest thing happened to me, I was waiting for weeks on basically every order and supply request I had sent out. We were short handed due to some shootings with our Prussian counter parts and as a result it was my turn to stand watch over the truck tunnel. This was one of the most secret projects to date since the German high command would flip their collective tables and charts over if they learned I was building a high way underground right towards them and it was withing walking distance of their trenches from the word go. On top of that, the British land forces leadership would have developed a sudden and unrepeatable case of terminal piles at the mention of our unit's name. It took most of our men a week to get that thing built and then we built a four truck garage in order to house our future fleet of vehicles. Well there I was and I could see movement coming along the above ground portion of the road but it had not lights or signals on. So I flashed the lantern to show them where I was and hoped they'd keep the signal down. What I got was a shipment beyond measurement, it was an entire division of French infantry bearing their complete kit and supplies to last them a week or more.
     No orders to speak of on their part except to remain unseen by the Germans, so the officers marched over to me as the only man present. I speak French and as a result was informed they knew almost nothing about their mission perimeters. I got them underground and we quickly established they were here for several days, We did not have enough room to house a thousand men and their kit if we were to have anything in a hope of doing our own jobs. So I hit upon the only option; I explained that due to the top secret mission they had we were not informed of their presence until today, but that I had been expecting some troops and supplies were issued to help me. Then I showed them to a section of tunnel which was largely unused at the time, instructed them that if they could form up we could have them housed within twelve hours. The men who saw how we lived; in near luxury really, and decided that half a day of digging wasn't too much to ask from them for the same levels comfort. Now after they unloaded their stuff; which took up almost every foot of space I had prepared for proper troops ( ones which didn't necessarily exist) they got to work digging and passing buckets until the job was done. Few people in my unit spoke French, and almost no one wanted to question too much why a French division was doing our dirty work for us. So after an entire day we had a room large enough for a thousand men to sleep in it was dubbed "the wine and cheese cellar". Which most ironically it would later become, after the French left it was our supply dump for a good long while to be.
     The French posed several problems, I had to keep them underground and busy but couldn't let them know too much about what we were actually doing here. They were it turned out very quickly nothing more than sacrificial lambs for a battle not a single person would have laid bets on it's success. Less than a week later the whole group was broken up into several smaller groups and spread out with other British outfits. I feel this was a terrible injustice, to them it was certain death for nothing. To me it was the loss of my greatest asset, nearly unlimited man power. In only eight hours they'd moved more dirt than my whole unit could have in six months, and if I'd had them six months we'd have won the whole damned battle ourselves. But that's another tale for another day.
      Well by the time the French had been moved around we had nearly finished all our primary ( nearest the surface tunnels) which were of the least tactical value but posed a lot of extra room for use to move about and keep materials in. I don't know if the German's ever got a word out of the prisoners they took over the time we were there however I do know that their digging became damnably close to completely beating us several times and it was only by insane actions on my and a couple of others parts including detonation of our own tunnels before / at the moments of a German counter sap that we were able to hold onto the ground we took at all. More than once we were surrounded, dug into and attacked; but overwhelming firepower and some ludicrous stunts managed to win the day.
     Now one fateful day the French were ordered to make an attack at dawn after an eight hour artillery barrage by our forces against the Germans. This had been the plan for years, and the Germans knew it down to a minute how to counter every step of this three hundred yard walk of death. The attack barely made it to the German lines before there were too few left able to fight at all. By the end of that morning the attack was over and we were wearing non-combat markings to retrieve the men who lay dead and wounded all over the filthy ruined soil. Being critically short on supplies we took whatever rifles / equipment there was on the ground with the dead and wounded and brought it back with us. Those rifles later saved our lives when the Germans decided to pay us back for this fool's errand, too close was this battle to mirror the one which was coming for us.
    Every time we got more wood, sand bags we were building up the fort underground, the tunnels were over constructed as I'd previously mentioned and when electric lights came along we were soon to use metal pipes in order to protect the wires from rodents as well as bullets / knives and explosions. The amount of stuff I had to use to keep our place from sinking, imploding or flooding could have built a whole town up like the one we were shooting over and through in the name of saving.
     We had ordered something to the tune of a quarter of a million board feet of lumber in every dimension to build houses but in ten foot lengths to keep it manageable to move and to emplace. I ordered enough bricks to make a retaining wall one hundred yards long and one yard tall along with sand and mortar. sheet metal to roof half a dozen houses and many many other things for the construction of one of the most expensive and secure sites in all of Europe's battle fields at the time. We often joked that by the war's end, our living quarters were happier, safer and better furnished than the officers who sent us orders from the train station thirty miles back behind the lines.
    Every so often someone would show up for an inspection, the Colonel some times or the captain of our section at the time. And we made everything look like it was Horse Guards, uniforms and bunks and a mess area. Hell we even had toilets and showers by the second or third month there. Also the continuous expansion of living space for troops both present and "not present". Which would come in handy for those terrible times when they heaped a bunch of new guys on us, those men usually got killed the first battle we had. But thankfully were kept on the books long enough that their families could be given some additional funds as well as desperately needed supplies which were only delivered based on how many living / breathing men were reported to be here any given week.
   Now I know some of you are calling "Foul / Freud" and whatever else, but if you weren't there you have no idea what it was like. Any time we had stuff delivered which we couldn't use we handed it out to the other units around us, no one was getting rich off the "extras"; it was all put to use to help the unit and the buddy units nearest ours. Had England sent us what we'd reasonably asked for to start with nothing like this would have become a reality but there you have it.
     By the end of September our tunnels were some of the best that had ever been constructed, the rats were rapidly becoming less of a problem and with the addition of some electric pumps and motors and "Jenny's" to power it all we were pumping all the water out of our lower reaches too.  Soon we were installing wood floors in our most important work areas to speed up the transfer of soils to the loading stations and a system of winches hauled it all up to the truck tunnels or sloping passages made it possible to roll trailers of soil to the truck for disposal.
    There was one real danger which wasn't yet under any sort of limitation yet; Fresh air.

It's a fact that in a mine, light and good air are the two most important things to a miner, in a battle underground this is even more so the case. For civilians can simply pump air from outside into the shafts and with regular vents to the surface make good circulation happen cheaply. In a war this is suicide, there are bombs falling, artillery shells screaming in and thousands of man walking around looking to kill you all the time. Add to that the use of poison gasses, which I have already spoken of my extreme distaste for their uses to you the reader.  This meant that we had large trucks burning fuel underground, hundreds of men, tens of thousands of rats ( whose smells were beyond description) and then auxillery power supply units to keep various areas in power. There were candles and lanterns for light always burning, these were all generating poison gasses and making terrible amounts of noise in a place where sounds were going to get you killed even if the gas didn't.
     We needed clean air and lots of it; so we built a system of chicken wire sections which could become pipe frames, then put canvas over them and made our own air ducts, this was at first to suck old air out of the deeper portions of the tunnels and keep it flowing. But sooner or later we learned this wasn't enough to supply all the needs, as well as it only opened them up to a new danger. By now Gas attacks were a reasonably uncommon thing because the weather was turning against their use and because nearly everyone knew how to avoid them personally. But in our case it could have been one gas attack from wiping us all out if they had but known at the time what we were doing and the scale which we had done it.
    So we build sealable doors over the truck tunnel; using wood and chicken wire fencing and oiled canvas in layered defenses like the airlocks of a warship. It proved to be very effective when it was finally needed, all machines were shut off and lights cut to min for the duration of the chemical attacks.
   Soon we began demanding sheet metal rolls, cutters and stove pipe sections to construct a proper section of airways as well as massive supplies of charcoal to make filters and fans to pump outside air through for a prolonged attack that we might be able to continue our combat effectiveness underground. It was a great plan and took stupefying amounts of planning to make it reasonably successful. But it vastly improved moral for the men and gave them reasons to believe in our unit and the mission.
     It was a cold day in hell when the train pulled into our depot's rail station, a cold rainy day with a chance of snow probably. Not only had we been given almost everything which we requested for the whole month but our military requests were sitting in five different locations around the supply depots while our civilian requests ( private purchases) had also been shipped out, though not in full. With one broken truck we drove off to get our supplies. Now wet lumber even the ubiquitous 2"x4" weighs as much as a pound per foot of length when soaked in water and getting our lumber delivered was later relegated to the British army's impossibly slow hands for ours was too precious a bunch of cargoes to hope they weren't stolen if we had delayed their pick up. Thankfully we got almost an entire week off as a result of the massive supply loads constantly being delivered to the wine and cheese cellar. Later on it was proved vitally important that we had them on hand, in subsequent attacks be concentrated German plans they had wiped out much of our tunnels more than once and also shelled our trenches to a point that they were barely recognizable as man made. It was the extensive use ( at my insistence) of prefabrication and pre-building supplies that we could replace things in a fraction of the time it took to make / set up originally.
     There in the closing days of the month more men arrived, many of whom died so soon after arrival that we only know who they were because there is a name on every bunk for who slept there. And one wall with every soldier who served / died marked down. I have omitted their names from this story because I do not have the permission of their families and because it's heart breaking to remember how many good men died for what I believe were futile and hopeless attacks by the officers of all armies involved.

     Of the men who survived I am even now receiving their version of events and will attempt to put them into some kind of order before putting them into this ever growing document. Failing that, I will move on to the events of October of that year.

We marched before dawn toward the trenches and our first taste of what the war really was.

Everywhere around us the ground had been upturned and cratered, broken barbed wire and stumps were scattered about on either side. Here and there were the signs of battles not very long past at one point along the way we could make out the shapes of some buildings in the gloom, here about five miles from the front was the company head quarters as well as the head quarters for several other units. They had everything here, a hospital was clearly visible among the tents as well as what looked like a passable command center.
Among the equipment we could make out there seemed to be plenty of artillery and reinforced bunkers not far away from them, there was a series of stables and barns. There in the early morning a group of Horse Guards cavalry were saddling up with bright uniforms and pennants and lances, incredible hats to finish it all off. The Company commander's unit was out front raising the British flags to a full musical accompaniment while other men went about their morning affairs. Somewhere out in the distance the rumbling thunder of cannons and the crack of rifles could still be heard far off ahead of us.

Some time in the post dawn hours we reached the "reserve trenches" which is where the acting captain was waiting for us, there had been a battle that night between the joint French / English forces on station and some number of Germans, looking out over the next mile it was as if some children had made two castles in the sand and then set their ants at odds with each other. trails and tunnels wove around drunkenly on the Allied side from one spot to the next. Here and there some spots could be seen some spots where a base was positioned under ground and reinforced with a seemingly endless quantity of sand bags or wood. We all were grouped up now and given over to a local trooper who had been in the sections we were coming to bolster. The walk down was a filthy affair even though it hadn't rained in some time the ground seemed to ooze moisture when you got down off the top level, a thing we did quickly as the Germans were less than half a mile away. Some times bullets would land around us as we hurried down to the relative safety which was afforded to us among the sand bags and shockingly sparse wood supports. It's worth pointing out too that we could see the now infamous "no man's land"; which was one of the single ugliest things I'd ever seen in life. When you reach the trenches you cannot see where you are in relation to anything else, that's a deliberate design, every few yards they turn sharply one way then the other way. It means if you land in a trench you cannot shoot down the length of it, also if a shell or bomb falls it won't wipe everyone out down the line either...
For men just arrived it's incredibly disorienting, there are no maps because that's a liability  and every little pocket of troops are all people from some village so they know who's on either side of them but you're just passing through so you can't hardly get a word in with them. Some of them cheered us for coming to relieve them and others shook their heads muttering dark things about more meat for the butchers. All the American's wore a kind of look, maybe it was our Colt Revolvers, or the stunning new 1911A1s which had been special ordered thanks to a friend and delivered to us. Or the fact that we wore large felt hats similar to the ones our Australian counter parts wore around us, but these had a buckle which read USA. There were hoots for the American's entering the war and people asking when the President of America was sending more of us in?

We had to tell them that as far as anyone knew; America was staying out of the European war, but some of us thought we'd come and give it a try.

This was not what they wanted to hear. The English had been fighting for two years with France and some token support from other nations here. But France had a massive army and England did not, both were suffering terrible losses with no end in sight, it was decided that the war of attrition was wearing all parties down terribly without any real gains to be shown for it. There were hopes that our common ancestry would prevail upon the Americans and some day our nation would rise up to stop the war with as massive influx of troops and supplies. That was England's hope anyway.

We wove our way through the lines until we were brought to a short doorway into a sunken room, and each man made his way inside. The walls, floor and most of the roof were all dirt. Boards and wood pillars seemed to hold most of it back, but there was little in the way of comforts here. The officer on hand was not able to tell us much, in fact their own officer had been killed as were most of the men with him repelling the attack last night. There wasn't any room for us either, curiously someone seemed to be just sending men to places off the top of the head and several other units had already been sent here without further orders. There was a great deal of discourse about who we were and what our training and orders were, after some point the leading Australian decided he'd take a "walkabout". Returning later on he informed us he'd met up with another mostly Australian group in a forward section, and lacking orders decided we were moving forwards into the second trench.

Here we stayed a short time, and by luck were even given some space to settle down for a bit. The second trench was there to provide supporting roles if any of the sections of the First Trench were over run or in danger of such. Here it was learned we were not alone in our feelings about how stuff was handled, for it was a common practice for some of the Australians to bring along personal weapons. It was a thing which officers were meant to do, but in war it seemed nearly everyone in the Australians brought a shot gun, some kind of pistol and some had their own hunting rifles... Each man maintained the issued rifle which England had supported, but seemed to like their own guns when the higher ups weren't looking too closely.

Sadly our time here was limited to just a day, that night we were already moved again to a place they called "the Abbey" and "Abbington trenches". It was a terrible spot along the first line trenches. Just in front of it was a little spot which they called "Jerry Hill"; and in the ruined remains of an old church the Germans had set up a collection of machine guns, rifles and spotters. The first trench section was regularly filled by their gun fire day and night even without a visible target they simply filled it with bullets.

After much dodging and swearing all of us; the entire group of new guys managed to get there and then through the trenches to the supposed safety of this group's head quarters only two dozen feet under ground. It was little better than the other places where we'd stopped or chatted. Dirt everywhere, mud and filth with a smell both like a crypt and a soggy basement at the same time. The lighting was candles or some lanterns, the men slept on the floors where they chose to, rats could be seen plain as day running through the shadowy areas into holes large enough to put a man's leg through. The LT. was a man with a seemingly unbroken family line of soldiers, and in each war someone had died, the only bright spot in the facility was an area where he had been given some boards enough to build an office into one wall for records and opposite that was the supplies for the unit. His side had a flag, crossbow, sword, axe, a broken lance tip and several guns one of which seemed to be the largest shot gun ever made by man.

There were introductions made and with some amusement we were informed that some additional supplies had arrived for us via a large group of wagons around dawn but little other orders. There a dozen foot locker sized boxes with shipping labels and instructions for delivery had been set, and locked with a large label from the Sears and Roebuck Company of Chicago Ill, USA glued to the top of each.

With some encouragement we got out our keys ( mailed to us before hand) and opened them up; each man who'd given up his pay from basic had been sent a kit of "everything you need for safari, or a short war" customized for the purchaser by our allies and friends back home. Some had chosen hunting rifles, shot guns, pistols which were family classics and others had chosen state of the art weapons that cost a month's wages to buy.

There were bullets a plenty too; someone had gone over board we thought; sending nearly a thousand rounds of each and for each...
We were sent two weeks worth of clothes, spare hats, compasses, boiled leather leggings and some gloves. There were binoculars and flashlights with spare bulbs and batteries for each man, soap, towels and some blankets. But the winter weight sleeping bags were the greatest thing by size or weight, each was filled with three pounds of down feathers, flannel linned and made of heavy water proof canvas outside. Someone had ordered a hammock of all things and hooks to put it up on.

Now I left the guns to Number Two, because he was a man of the out doors it seemed and read sporting catalogs the way ladies read fashion journals. He had ordered for me a lever action rifle the 1895 rifle/shotgun in .401 caliber but could also shoot a .410 shotgun shell I learned. It was something of a mystery except to a few other men who'd heard they were issued to special police units to break up riots, the bullet was huge, nearly a quarter again heavier than the English Enfield rounds and said to kill any animal in North America which you chose to hunt. The tube underneath it was the magazine and it had been given room for six rounds. I was also ordered a Colt .45 peace maker in double action with a leather belt for it and a bandoleer for the rifle in case I felt like reloading half a dozen times.

Number Two had ordered what would have been the same gun, except he had fanangled someone into modifying a pump shotgun to take the rifle/shotgun barrel. This he explained was because you could fire a pump from the hip, you could fire it laying down and you could shoot it in a trench or a tunnel. And because he had only ever seen one in his life, and decided he wanted it. He had taken for himself a colt 45 automatic; that is to say the world famous 1911. He also had possession of a .38 revolver too. It was then that Number Two also displayed yet another curiosity which American's were known to have but few Englishmen could obtain even if they had been able to afford. There was a wooden box with the gun and it contained two sets of "micrometer peep sights". They boasted you could see clearer, farther and shoot better than any other man in the world, unless he had bought this same company's "telescopic sights". When asked why he hadn't preferred the telescope gizmos number two gave a reply which every one balked at.

He said "With eyes like mine, it wouldn't really help". Then he went on to point out the sights he bought could be folded down when in a hurry or were not needed; but "Having a big old chunk of glass was heavy and gave you away to the other guys".

Local commanders were short on everything, food, bullets, grenades which they called "Bombs", clothes or any other thing which you could name. Here we were all clean and fresh in our gear it was probably a bit of a shock to see a group of young clean Americans with everything they could have asked for shipped over without a scratch or a delay.

Among the Australians were some other colonial troops, a few from India, and a place called Nepal  which I was to learn was among the strangest and harshest places on earth. It was so bad there if you went to visit that the Nepalese actually volunteered to come and fight the Germans. They seemed to delight in it too, shurking their rifles issued to them in favor of rather large and oddly shaped knives or garrote for night time hunting parties. Adding to this was the fact that the Nepalese man who's name I could never get right; had brought with him a large box containing a creature rather like the largest weasel you'd ever seen. It was about the size of a small dog in fact and kind of brownish in coloration. Making the strangest sounds as it slumbered in his box. This thing was referred to as some by the moniker "snake eater" or "that blasted rat eater". And later simply labeled "mongoose". Now the mongoose once released into the area was one of the killingest creatures god ever put on the planet; probably the only predator for the "dreadnaught class rats" which roamed the tunnels and hallways openly day or night. But when you were walking around the mongoose wasn't any trouble at all really. It quickly became a favorite subject of bets and drawings among men stationed with our group.

It was a tragedy then that first night we were there and the Nepalese guy and several others who volunteered to go out and blow up the base on Jerry Hill. That attack was an unfortunate event for their cover was blown a gun fight could be heard and none of them were ever seen again. However the mongoose remained with us and continued to be a mascot throughout the rest of our war campaigns.

The plan to destroy Jerry hill in repayment for the loss of our comrades was simple enough; crawl up in the middle of the night while the artillery was going off, carry about six backpacks worth of explosives then detonate them inside the walls. Grenades, pistols and other weapons were handed out too.

It was a resounding success, reducing the entire church, the hill it sat upon into a crater about one city block wide after a short shootout and some snooping around. The explosion set everyone off, the Germans did not forget us and the British began to realize we were the group to get things done.

Fresh off the boat

It was late Summer when we completed our training, August in England is something you either love or loathe and I was ready for the short time along the coast. Now Back home most people are used to the idea of traveling a hundred miles or so on occasion. State Capitals, business trips and weddings take lots of us out atleast fifty miles or so from time to time. In England we learned you are never more than about sixty miles from the ocean, and yet the average person in England probably traveled less than twenty miles on any given week. With or without the war mind you, with the war there are limitations on a lot of non-war essentials like fuel and other consumables as well as placing a premium on train tickets.

But we are Americans, and dammit we wanted to see something of the country who was sending us over to fight and die for them. So we bought some tickets, first class with our pocket money and then with some new friends we'd made in basic training and the very short advanced training for tunneling which I and the rest of my new friends had also found ourselves a part of. These boys were largely speaking Australians, some British kids from mining families too and were there for "not English" and treated as such by the English.

Our little excursion to the coast was interesting, however like everything else in England I learned that the beaches are not the same as the American beaches. These are largely round / large pebbles it seemed and the towns which are all along the coast where we spend the weekend were very quiet as the war kept a lot of people at home rather than taking vacations.

When we got to the departure point with less than an hour to spare, seems someone forgot several pieces of kit and we went all over hell and back to make sure everything was accounted for. Anyway the boat ride was pretty much what you'd expect; several thousand kids and young men with some older guys too. Everyone of us was checked, our gear checked and then we were ordered about. Then standing five deep on the decks of some run down old boat we waved to the crowds as the ship pulled away and into a course east. It wasn't a long trip, a couple hours and all the while France was just there in our sights. When we landed in France It was a much more curt affair, there along some dock was waiting for us a collection of under officers, quarter masters and French Officials who each wanted our man power for their own divisions or some other purpose. But thankfully the officers sent with us were reasonably aware of the practices where an under serving officer went out on leave to try and wrangle some new troops off the boat before they realized that they were off to the wrong spot. Woe be him who fell into their hands, for his pay was stopped without his presence at the correct place and some times charges filed until the truth was learned. But rarely did someone find their way back to the original unit after that and with so many losses being suffered most of the men simply got eaten up by the war without a word from them to reach home.

I will skip over the train ride to the border, and of France we saw at first very little though it looked lovely from the speeding train cars. Ours was a complete unit when we got into the train, an entire company with all it's baggage and support structures in tow. The train cars were filled with supplies and then men, first into box  cars and then later men were given to stand around on top of the flat cars on the trucks and supplies which were tied down. The trip only took a day, with some stops along the way to drop off goods or take on mail I do not know specifically and never asked. It was just then that we got our first looks at what the war had to offer us.

What we saw was a change as subtle as it was horrific to realize, less than an hour behind us on the train ride up were rolling farms and people going about their affairs. Here and there we could now see a house or farm which was blown apart, dead horse in a field some times and a tree which was stripped of all it's growth. As the train pulled up to our final stop we saw the worst thing upto then any of us had ever set eyes on. The area was a massive and sprawling expanse on one side of the tracks which looked like some kind of prison cross bread with a stock yard from hell. Barbed wire and towers with men and rifles, while hundreds of other men ran out to meet the train and hurriedly unloaded the flat cars right away. Horses pulled carts along once filled to the distant battle field some thirty miles away from our position. Even then we could hear the sound of heavy guns firing and see the flashes as some exploded.

The weather was still rather good, and we were quickly put to the task of unloading the train cars from all their cargo, then loading it onto the many carts and wagons which awaited our arrival. The few trucks we saw were almost all medical corps owned and no one was allowed near them, seems that they had a lot of pain killers and other stuff not intended for regular troops to handle. That took nearly a day to finish up, and after that we were put to a small filthy field where pairs of men set up their shelter halves into tents and began the short experience we had as soldiers in a "proper fighting unit" as one of the officers would tell us. For soon all of us were going to be shoulders deep in it; and if we were lucky maybe even a few dozen feet deeper where there were only slightly fewer things trying to kill you at anyone time.

Before dawn the next morning we were called up into formations and we struck camp for an all day forced march towards front lines and the battles just visible on the horizon some times. The English are a brutal bunch when it comes to many things, their pay for military men is completely arbitrary and they are as far as I know the only country to pay the infantry less in combat than on parades. The hours a soldier gives up as well as all his other sufferings are without count, but they excel at one thing in particular; they have an over developed sense of propriety and after five hours marching one of the officers took it into his head to stop for a bit of lunch. And we were all allowed to stop while he ate. Then four hours later he stopped for tea with the rest of the red jacket bunch and again we stopped. This time however everyone had tea, for it seems that if there is any equality in the British army it is that every man is believed to be afforded tea once a day. Then another four ours of marching brought us to a spot where all armies came to make camp before setting off again, it was almost perfect in a way. For so many had used it that the tent spots were already arranged and the foot roads were lined out as were fire pits for cooking and so on. This greatly sped up our evening actions and allowed some relief for a bit. Then we were ordered to not have any fires, lest the German flyers see us and report our movements... Who could hide a thousand men making a camp in a field? I wondered but already knew that there was no point in asking such things from the officers.

The Morning was coming too soon, so we ate cold rations before rolling ourselves into the pairs of blankets afforded to us along with the fifty odd pounds of equipment the military so graciously ladelled onto our backs at the point of embarkation. The Morning came painfully early for it was still dark when we marched down the last ten or so miles and saw all these horrors which until then had been myth and rumors.

Well I spent as much time as I could with Mia before they crammed us into a train car and shipped the whole lot off to basic training. And just before I left on that train she gave me her address and said I could write, this is probably what has kept me going like I have been. Basic training was arduous, and long without much in the way of highlights to relate to you now, though for posterity I will admit that I could shoot the hell out of anyone else in our unit except perhaps the other Americans of course. But I'm not a combat man, I never wanted to kill anyone really, engineering and mining were my tasks and that's where I made my mark on them all. It was here I really got to meet the people I'd serve with, for American's are not highly thought of in the British military, despite our history with or against them it's an open matter that they don't place a value on us as soldiers. So we naturally end up in the same units for training and for other tasks they came up with for us. But If American's are known for a couple of things it's finding solutions to problems without regards to "how things are done" and keeping each other close.

Two of my great friends were there with me, we'd met on the boat and by the time things got rough in training I realized that all we had were each other and we never forgot it. By the time that our unit was ready to leave I was less than affectionately called "Number One" by our British overlords, and my closest friend was "Number Two", the two of us were like mirror images physically we're almost the same to glance at. But  where he slides through a barracks in the darkness to set up a collection of cans and trip wires after buttering the entire floor of the sergeant's room and getting out without disturbing his bulldog. I have trouble moving through the tea shops without bumping into things. I'm not clumsy, after all I handled explosives and detonates without ever having an issue, but he simply ghosts through life and I walk through it solidly. Number Two as he was ever after called such, our little bunch of "cow boys" as they called us were always into some kind of trouble. Number Two was my right hand in all things outside, while I was there to make sure he passed all things indoors. The rest of our unit largely speaking could handle their own except one or two people found to be less the student and more the out doors types.

They simulated a gas attack on us one day, out doors with no gas masks using tear gas only they used about five times as much as is needed to break a riot up. Then blind folded us after we could barely see anyways and then ordered us through a field of barbed wire and fake explosives while shooting over and around us. The idea was to make it back to "base" while unable to see and do it while leading our buddies back too. Now no one makes it through this one without loosing someone, and most units don't even complete the course. The penalty for this is a severe running round the camp till the unit collapsed in front of the entire camp at the end of the day...
We were broken into two groups and thrown into the field with other groups. Now the first thing you do if find everyone in your unit. Number Two found everyone by a careful search and ordering them all to ground. I was aware of every single location we had walked, I just always do. And waited for the sounds of compliance to greet us even as the NCO's were screaming at us and artillery shells were going off. Then I moved around until we'd found everyone and got them to line up. After that you normally would be made to stand and walk back, but under fire this is certain death. To remind you of this someone is instructed to throw cricket balls at random and strike anyone standing up. Where they remain until the end of the day as a casualty. Just to keep it realistic the "dead" are still hit periodically to keep them yelling and crying out for help and add to the chaos of it all.
So we moved through the battle field and did it by way of some improv movements you see, each person got into line, while the perfect navigator lead them the man with outstanding fieldcraft came up in the back to make sure that none were left behind. Even after people were "tagged" by enemy fire we managed to keep them moving by getting hold of their belts and pulling them in step with our selves. To cross a field on your belly about half a mile would take almost an hour or more. Do it in a straight line while blind folded alone takes about twice as long. Do it as a team and forget about timed races, now do it with a war going on around you and all bets are off... Like I said, not many people complete it and no one ever makes it all out as a unit.
Once or twice something went wrong, and we were scattered only to form up again and begin the task as before. Several times we even found and caught stragglers from other units, taking them with us as they came along too. Well at some point we came to the point where we should have exited the field, except now there was more barbed wire! OH JOY, not that was wrong mind you just that something had changed while we were unable to see around us. So after a bit of a talk head to head it was decided that several of us would move forwards and find the posts where the fencing was secured, then the back up guys would come up along side and as a pair of groups we ripped the posts out of the ground and at once pushed the fences upwards while the rest of the party scooted under again...

Now they say the British Army does not accept defeat, they have even less acceptance to answers which defy tradition to go along with that. The result was a return from the field of every man in our unit, dead or injured and half a dozen men from other units. Some times when you get tired of something you don't like you might be tempted to act out, and it turns out the hitting people with cricket balls just because they thew one at you is also something they frowned upon... Several promising young men were "tragically injured" by a baseball enthusiast with a good arm and dead on aim as it turned out. We were recognized for our cool headedness under fire, the individual's abilities to navigate as well as throw grenades back to their owners and finally for bringing everyone we found back out of it.

And after that we were made to run until we threw up for failing to complete the course as planned, demolishing the fence and lest we not forget for striking a superior with cricket balls. This was one of the last tests we had to do strictly speaking as infantry. The rest were not very interesting and unless someone else relates them will go on without being said or recorded.

However, we did receive two chances to live out a weekend underground in a team based tunnels and trenches recreation. The plan was to have the German's try to take out your trench over the course of a weekend while the fake shelling and machine gun fire was going off. It's a little disconcerting at first but soon enough we settled into it all. everyone was in charge of their little patch of ground and with our equipment on hand the routine of it all came well enough to us. Now the British are supposed to win that's a pretty easy bet right? After all they want you to feel good when you take the fields for the first time, but our officer at the time a kid from some family or another could barely load his hand gun much less to lead us. He got "hit" by one of the rouge cricket balls and was declared dead from a grenade or something. Much later we learned that German Grenades don't go off on impact and take almost twelve seconds to blow up if at all...
But there we are without a leader and it's raining while the German's advanced over a field towards us, We had wooden rifles, wooden knives and our kit. So we are supposed to yell BANG! very loudly then the German falls to the ground.

Each of us pointed to a "German" and did our job, some of them fell others did not but soon it became a terrible fact that they were not falling as much as we were shooting. Now several of us quickly thought this was a raw deal, or "not cricket" as the Brits say. And our response was to be being hurling rocks into them screaming "GRENADE!" and then hitting them as hard as possible in the face or stomach thanks to the baseball fans we had. Soon they began to fall, some had to be hit twice before they decided to lay down and die. Now a British rifle is a fine tool, but bolt actions are slow and they want you to aim every shot and then you only fire every couple of seconds as a result. This is unacceptably slow in combat you will learn, so slow that the Germans walk several paces forwards between shots. Someone in our unit came upon an idea; and he yelled "FRITZ, HEAD SHOT.... JERRY LEG SHOT, YES YOU ! I"M LOOKING RIGHT AT YA!"

Between shots we began shooting men in pairs calling out who and where while someone else stoned them to death. Sooner or later of the dozens who'd been crossing there was a group nearly at our little trenches and the order was heard all around us ( for we were not alone on the field, there were other units too) and someone yelled "FIX BAYONETS!" But being American's some of us did not see that this was a prudent plan, so we kept shooting just before the German's first group reached us someone hurled his trench shovel over the pit and hit a man in the knee. He dropped with genuine pain howling loudly his buddies were getting a similar treatment for their marching on us. Someone jumped out of the trench and a couple of guys followed despite orders to remain inside while they began to charge forwards, you are supposed to hold fast and then lunge with the knives on your guns. The would be German charged towards us with a terrible yell the idea to put up our guns and stuff them into a man was not something I was keen on so I backed up. Number two was there with me and as the man plunged into the pit with us gun and knife ready we bailed into opposing directions. His wood knife broke off into the ground and that's when we hit him, both of us over the back and the knees. It was a terrible thing to do to a man and he was hit harder than we'd planned but our blood was up and there's nothing to do after that. Now there were too many men for us to fight off in a few moments they were upon us so we bailed out. The screams from other trenches about cowardice was roaring but we didn't care, survival was all that mattered. They jumped in as we got out, and finding it rather surprising (Victory was German's standing in your trenches and none of you standing in them) But they turned after the British men who remained and traded slashes or blows with the practice guns. Moments later   Number Two did something they didn't expect, He threw his backpack into a man trying to hit us. There is a lot of weight in one of those things and you don't take a hit in the face lightly.

After that we threw out rifles into the next closest men hitting them in the ribs, it was just a simple thing to jump back in again. Behind them were more men and we hit every single one until they submitted. Then we began hurling more objects at them while taking a German Rifle and pretending to shoot more people, drop the gun and then pick up another one. Somewhere along the way they got to us and the fighting began in earnest. Now we are not soldiers, it doesn't matter what they tell you. When a man looks like he's going to kill you and you've never killed someone else you are not yet a soldier you're a terrified boy and you want out right now... There is no out, there's live or die and we were doing everything not to die. I started yelling and slashing with the knife on a German gun, they say hit him with the tip and go for the guts but that's really hard to do. If you lean back he leans forwards and the guy next to you reaches out and grabs the end of his gun then rips him into the pit. Men break ranks at the end, some are faster or more eager and they reach you first. Single them out, attack him in pairs or groups and be complete in your attack. He fell into the pit and two of us hit him so hard he cried like a child. His buddies were running up now to take us out when a huge Texas boy and a crazy Irishman saddled up along side us. Number two takes the nine pound rifle and throws it like a spear, sailing into the middle of some poor bastard who collapsed into a heap, three remaining Germans come running. The Texas boy takes the gun and swings like a practiced batter only to let go as it circled round and round into the air the first man jumped an the third man caught it in the legs without a hope of recovery he slammed into the sandbags. The last man screams and jumps into the trench we were standing in. The Irishman served him with an underhand stroke the broke the wooden rifle before sending him backwards against the wall. Texas and Number two hit him each with savage strikes of their remaining weapons several times just to make sure he was down. The rest of our trench was a mess, men everywhere clashing or crying out. And soon we started hurling rifles into the German clusters right over their heads and defenseless they were soon too badly injured to actually fight. The tactic of tossing a "Grenade" into a group of them was less effective than out on open ground. But it seems the Irishman and the boy they called Texas could rip a ten foot length of board off the wall of our trench and demolish any German hope of attack very fast.

At the end of the action it was learned we had lost half our men outright, several more were being regarded as cheaters for various actions taken up. And all of us were questioned extensively on the use of grenades which did not exist as well as how we fired rifles without reloading them. The matter of assault vs counter assault was a wild and deeply personal issue where charges were brought up for excessive force against our opponents or the illegal use of materials. But as it was very hard for anyone injured to say who had hit them when or how often the matter was largely washed out save for the incident where some of the men had broken ranks and charged into the field. It seems they had "killed" a number of Germans by shooting them in the back in the charge. But as no one died because they couldn't see who had shot them the German's kept moving along. So a tactic was developed there and then to run up behind the Germans and simply stab them in the back, each and every man say two dozen was beaten to the ground while marching stead fast into a certain win against our section of trenches. There was the matter of letting the German's take our trench, and though they did not hold it they had gained entry to it. Which was regarded as a failure. However none of them survived long enough to raise the flag and make it an official win. There was the other matter than none of the actors were in a condition to walk away either, also the matter that we had systematically destroyed all of their painstakingly produced guns, knives and helmets as well as tearing or smashing a good many other articles.

After that our training was effectively over. There was little else to learn, some machine guns and other tools for war. Radios, phones and such were only briefly covered with constant mentioning the need to never let one fall into German hands.

And then we got a last weekend before being shipped over to the twenty or so miles to France, it seems a little thing twenty miles but the English were very careful about troop movements. Germans were everywhere and their much feared submarines were said to haunt the coasts day and night. We took in a few shows the boys and I with our British squad mates, some pints of beer the horrors of which I've already detailed before. I sent off a pair of letters, one back home with my marching orders and expected army mailing address and then we picked up our mail.

What had arrived was everything a man needed to go to war, care of the Sears and Roebuck company's outstanding selection of outdoor supplies. The items delivered to each of us had been carefully selected by the group's experts and we paid them back in cash. Now I knew little about the facts of life and death when it came to war but when we were finished with the English army's training every American in the group had decided that they wanted an American gun in their hands when the shooting started. Each man of us was ordered a rifle, a shot gun and atleast one pistol. None of this would be regulation mind you however it was allowed by commanders who had a long tradition of self equipping as well. Our ammunition was likewise supplied and nearly a week's worth of clothes. There was a heavy sleeping bag filled with feathers for winter and a good many other things. The total load was so great we could barely stagger around with it, and of course we were required to carry the issued equipment when in uniform.

When we boarded the ship for France we could actually see the cliffs of France waiting for us, though our time in France is a story for another day.