Next minute, they were climbing down wooden steps and into a trench. ‘This way,’ voices whispered. ‘Hurry! This way.’ They turned left, turned right, moved on.
Duckboards clacked under their feet. Walls of timber and sandbags rose on either side of them, high above their heads. Men with rifles stood on ledges, peering through slits in the sandbags. Others lay huddled in cramped alcoves cut into the trench walls, staring at 3 Platoon and the others as they filed past. They’d made it. Finally, they were there.
They had arrived just in time. Almost immediately, the other troops in the trench began shrugging on packs, picking up rifles, forming up in lines to leave. They were in a hurry, also. Nobody wanted to be in the open when daylight came. The other soldiers were Scottish, by the sound
