The fields were checkered squares and oblongs, and a
ruined village in the distance seemed a jumbled handful of children's
gray and red blocks.
The German batteries appeared now to be directly beneath us--some of
them, though in reality I imagine the nearest one must have been nearly
a mile away on a bee line. They formed an irregular horseshoe, with the
open end of it toward us. There was a gap in the horseshoe where the
calk should have been. The German trenches, for the most part, lay
inside the encircling lines of batteries. In shape they rather
suggested a U turned upside down; yet it was hard to ascribe to them any
real shape, since they zigzagged so crazily. I could tell, though,
there was sanity in this seeming madness, for nearly every trench was
joined at an acute angle with its neighbor; so that a man, or a body of
men, starting at the rear, out of danger, might move to the very front
of the fighting zone and all the time be well sheltered. So far as I
could make out there were but few breaks in the sequence of
communications.
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