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.