On it stands Private Ryan Gearing, hunched over a periscope which pokes above the trench’s lip. The trench wall is an odd constellation of wooden boards, metal panels and sandbags, seemingly held together by, and smeared over, with this endless, sticky mud.īehind me a suffocating passage leads into a gloomy, damp dug-out, where I can just make out a forlorn candle flickering in the corner below the thin smoke from a charcoal stove.īack in the trench the wall nearest the ‘enemy’ is lined with a two-foot high layer of sandbags, which forms a firing step. Ryan Gearing and Craig Appleton hunker down for safety (Image: Jake Darling) “Welcome to the western front,” says a grim but paternal Sergeant Major Craig Appleton. Somehow I squelch, slide and contort myself forward until I am squatting on what is allegedly the floor of the most forward front line trench. I eye up a thick cord running along the side of the trench but am told this is the ‘sacrosanct’ telephone line, whose safety is more important than my own or any other soldiers’. What is not splintering wood is rusting corrugated iron.
“Do not touch anything! Anything you touch will cut you. “Don’t touch that!” explodes the same voice. I look around for something to hold so I can yank myself free. They have disappeared, clamped into the light brown, gluey mud.
I crouch and try to advance down the trench, but my feet will not move. If you stick your head above the parapet, you will be dead.” “You are surrounded on three sides by ‘Jerry’. “Keep your head down!” screams the burly sergeant major as I edge forward from the communications trench towards the front line.
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