Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1916 — SOLDIERS LIKE THEIR TRENCHES [ARTICLE]

SOLDIERS LIKE THEIR TRENCHES

Wlt-t FIGHT MORE BTUBBORNLY TO HOLD ONES THEY HAVE MADE OR IMPROVED HAVE 1 SENSE OF OWNERSHIP Officers Now Allow Men to Stay as Long as Possible in Own Quarters London.—How British troops become attached to the trenches which they have constructed or improved during occupancy to make them homelike to such a degree that a company permanently assigned to a certain trench will fight much more stubbornly to retain it against an assault than will temporary inhabitants has been recognized by the higher officers. Consequently It is now the policy, so far as is possible to allow each division to remain in Its own quarters Indefinitely.

A attached to the British headquarters writes of this interesting feature. "One thinks of a west country battailion, experts with the pick and spade, which is famed, and justly famed, for the character of its trenches. It recks little of other things, lives with greaves of trench mud to its bare knees —and above them; measures existence in terms of pit 'props and revetments, and develops a sense of ownership In its labyrinth as acute as that of any squatter upon the land. The value of this latter peculiarity has of late been realized by those in authority. It was observed that where a part of the line was held in rapid succession by various brigades there was an observable lack of certain qualities which distinguished trenches which had been held by the same troops for some time. It was an illustration, in fact, of the different treatment accorded to his tenement by the owner and the tenant. had not occurred to anyone that men could become attached to a certain set of trenches—narrow, slimy, smelly trenches —just as they become attached to a cottage wreathed with roses or the castle of their clan. Yet so It was. No one likes trenches, no one could like trenches; yet when you have to live in trenches you may like the trenches which owe to you their being better than other trenches in which you have no lot or part. Soldiers have to obey orders, and if a trench has to be faced with netting or given a brick floor the work Is done. But the work is quite differently done If the doers, and not some unknown reliefs, are to profit by it. "Witness the modern garden city, well known out here, on which a Certain division spent so much thought and labor and tenderness and blood during the months they held it, handing it over with a proud inscription attached, which declared that of all that had been given to them to guard they had lost nothing, and made, it might have added, a happy and habitable village out of a morass. "And this place, though the most notable example, did not stand alone in proof of the advantages attached to security of tenure. Nor was it altogether a question of making neat, brick floors, or well netted trenches, or adequate soak holes. The British soldier is notoriously careless and absent minded, and he is certainly not the less careless when making provision for others instead of himself. It was found that if he could count on a certain length of tenancy he would pay proper attention to head cover, make decently adequate funk holes and dug outs, and do his pumping with conscious rectitude.”