one cannot say that one time in the trenches is any more tense than another. one cannot take any one particular hour and call it, in modern nonsensical talk, “typical hour in the trenches.” the routine of the trenches has gone on too long for that. the tensest hour ought to be half an hour before dawn, the hour when attacks are expected and men stand to. it is an old convention of war that that is the dangerous hour, the hour when defenders are weakest and attack most to be feared. for darkness favours the attackers then as night favours the lion, and then dawn comes and they can hold their gains in the light. therefore in every trench in every war the garrison is prepared in that menacing hour, watching in greater numbers than they do the whole night through. as the first lark lifts from meadows they stand there in the dark. whenever there is any war in any part of the world you may be sure that at that hour men crowd to their parapets: when sleep is deepest in cities they are watching there.
when the dawn shimmers a little, and a grey light comes, and widens, and all of a sudden figures become distinct, and the hour of the attack that is always expected is gone, then perhaps some faint feeling of gladness stirs the newest of the recruits; but chiefly the hour passes like all the other hours there, an unnoticed fragment of the long, long routine that is taken with resignation mingled with jokes.
dawn comes shy with a wind scarce felt, dawn faint and strangely perceptible, feeble and faint in the east while men still watch the darkness. when did the darkness go? when did the dawn grow golden? it happened as in a moment, a moment you did not see. guns flash no longer: the sky is gold and serene; dawn stands there like victory that will shine, on one of these years when the kaiser goes the way of the older curses of earth. dawn, and the men unfix bayonets as they step down from the fire-step and clean their rifles with pull-throughs. not all together, but section by section, for it would not do for a whole company to be caught cleaning their rifles at dawn, or at any other time.
they rub off the mud or the rain that has come at night on their rifles, they detach the magazine and see that its spring is working, they take out the breechblock and oil it, and put back everything clean: and another night is gone; it is one day nearer victory.
