Each rocket is followed by a prompt fire from the field
batteries and a short spurt of rifle fire.
The trench to which I finally came at midnight was that in almost the
mathematical centre of the Guzow positions. Here behind an
eight-foot-high breastwork the famous regiment, which invariably has
been in the front line during the five months of the war, has made
itself efficiently at home. Since the war began the regiment, whose
normal strength is 4,000 men, has lost 5,500, making good its losses out
of the reserves, so that now again it is at its full strength.
The Germans have made a routine of their attacks, always making them at
night and always ineffectually. They advance as far as the barbed wire,
30 yards in front of the trench. There they encounter the full force of
the Russian rifle fire and fall back again. The Germans shell without
ceasing. All the Russians speak of their profuse expenditure of
ammunition. The commander of the trench told me that at the lowest they
fired over 3,000 shells on a single day.
Although intermittent firing continued through the night, no attack was
made. With the morning the German guns resumed their exhaustive questing
along the rear of the trenches, and a big factory to the southward once
more became their target. Its great chimney began to acquire a kind of
sporting significance, it was so obviously the object of fire in that
direction; and bets were going in the trench backing the chimney against
the German gunners.
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