Taking the German trench, which the Allies dubbed Hoop Trench, was a positive step forward in this winter of little movement on the frontline – but it put the Australians in danger, for it meant that the German artillery now knew their exact location. So it was decided to move the line forward 50 metres into the 300-metre-wide no-man's-land.
This was dangerous work that required a great deal of organisation and resources. It meant bringing up to the frontline entrenching tools, picks, shovels, barbed wire to be laid to protect the new trench, timber for shoring up the walls and duckboards to raise the bottom of the trench above the water line. It also meant bringing in additional men and ammunition, to ensure that those doing the digging were protected and the present frontline trench could be defended from an enemy attack.
In the chapter 'A Night in the Line', Nulla's battalion assisted the Pioneer battalion, something commonplace on the Western Front at the time. There was so much infrastructure to be built and maintained during the First World War – everything from trenches, duckboard tracks connecting the frontline to the rest areas at the rear, roads, bridges and railways – that five Pioneer battalions were raised by the AIF in 1916 to support the work of the engineers and the infantry. Digging was often done by sappers – a rank equivalent to private – from Pioneer units. Labourers imported from China and India were also sometimes employed for trench building.
First a rudimentary trench, known as a sap, had to be dug towards the German lines, from the head of which the new trench-line would spread out, left and right. So that men knew where to dig, first a team of Pioneers would creep out across no-man's-land under cover of darkness to lay a white tape, pegged into the ground, to show the zigzagging course of the new trench.
The tension during such an operation was high because all of this had to be done without alerting the enemy less than 300 metres away. All the while, German artillery continued their occasional firing on Australian positions. And in the case of Nulla's battalion, a lone enemy machine-gun that caused many fatalities during the taking of Hoop Trench is still in action, sending out a burst of fire along the Australians' parapet every now and then. In his job as runner, Nulla suddenly finds himself going out on a raid to try and take out the German gun.
Their small party crawls out into no-man's-land to try to surprise the machine-gunners. The type of scene that Lynch describes here was repeated across the front during the war and numerous Victoria Crosses were awarded to men who put their lives on the line to eliminate an enemy machine-gun holding up an Allied advance.
Nulla's party does manage to capture the gun, but Nulla has to shoot one of the enemy – if not the first casualty he has directly inflicted on an enemy soldier, at least the first he has shared with the reader. The man groans, badly wounded in the arm, inspiring Nulla's pity for a moment. Despite being surrounded by unrelenting carnage for so many weeks and despite having been under threat himself from the German machine-gun, he has not yet lost his compassion and humanity.
He soon learns another important soldier's lesson: that compassion and humanity are not necessarily repaid in war. Hidden under the man's legs is a fully loaded automatic pistol with the safety catch off, and it is only through Dark's careful spotting that Nulla has a narrow escape. It is another reminder that the dividing line between life and death, and between being a man and being a ruthless killer, is razor-thin on the Western Front.
Nulla's next task is another dangerous one. Lewis gunners have been sent out a few metres ahead of the tape line, to protect the men who will be digging the trench. Now he has to guide seven men out into the blackness of no-man's-land to set up listening posts in between the guns, which are placed at about 50-metre intervals. The job of each man at the listening post is to be alert for any sounds of movement by the Germans; at the slightest sound, they are to report back.
The gunners that are posted in front of the new trench-line are manning Lewis guns. The Lewis gun, considered the best, most efficient light machine-gun available at the time, was invented in 1911 by an American army colonel, Isaac Newton Lewis, but was not issued to British and Australian units until late 1915. It weighed 12 kilograms and had a rate of fire of 500 to 600 rounds per minute. Supported on two legs and with adjustable sights, it was effective up to 600 metres. Its introduction into the war revolutionised Allied tactics because one Lewis gun had the same firepower as fifty riflemen.
The only solace for Nulla in his night as a runner is the swigs of SRD rum he is offered. The initials stood for 'Service Rum – Dilute', meaning that it was concentrated and was intended to be watered down before drinking, but the troops coined their own explanation: 'Seldom Reaches Destination'. Though it may be hard to imagine in today's military that men could be sent out in the dark amidst tortuous trenches after drinking alcohol, in the British and Australian armies during the First World War, rum was a staple ration. Shipped to the front in one-gallon pottery jars, the rum brought a feeling of warmth and comfort to the men in the freezing trenches, and perhaps gave them a touch of 'Dutch courage' and the will to go on. As Nulla says after he accepts his CO's water bottle, to find that it contains not water but rum, 'I begin to feel it's not such a bad war after all.'
The men are moved into their new frontline trench. It is only 4 feet (1.2 metres) deep, so they have to walk bent over to avoid being shot at by the enemy, but nonetheless it is quite an achievement after one night's digging. In the following week, as was customary in this kind of operation, the men would deepen the trench, cut fire steps into the sides on which they could stand high enough to see and fire their rifles over the parapet, shore up the sides and lay duckboards on the floor.
Nulla settles down in a dugout with two signallers and offers to take a shift on the phone, allowing them to sleep. Signallers were of an equivalent rank to privates, but were part of the Corps of Australian Engineers. On the Western Front, they upheld their motto, 'Certa Cito' or 'Swift and Sure', under very trying conditions, continuously carrying out repairs to lines blasted apart by artillery bombardment.
The signallers are pleasantly shocked to discover that Nulla has had signals training and can communicate in Morse code, which the signallers use to communicate with the battalion headquarters behind the line. At regular intervals, signallers on each end of the line would 'sound through' to ensure the line was undamaged and they still had communications.
Lynch's records show he attended a signaller's course late in 1918, and no doubt this training informed his portrayal of a night in signaller's headquarters. Certainly it must be behind his deft translation of some joking Morse code from the battalion headquarters explaining the dreadful sound coming down the phone line: the snoring of the colonel. It is a moment of levity that gives Nulla a much-needed chuckle after a night of relentless danger.