The Man from Burnt Island

Frank marched down into the trenches with his company, weaving his way through the narrow, winding mud held up by planks to keep the trench walls from collapsing. There were sections of trench where wood planks floated in mucky water and to lose one’s balance off the plank often resulted in pulling a bootless foot from the sucking muck. Soldiers crouched and snatched bits of sleep in small dug-outs in the walls, and these were mostly a refuge from the muck of the trench floor. The rats apparently thought so too. Artillery shells flew overhead, towards the German line. Most hit in no-man’s land – an otherworldly collection of shell holes, barbed wire, and obstacles of various sorts intended to make traversing this stretch of hell next to impossible. German shells were also regularly fired, but they rarely came close to the trenches.