Rest did not come easy off the line, as life back at the camp was just as busy, though not under the threat of artillery so that was something. We slept well the first day, but as soon as we woke up we were put to work. There was always work to be done with a camp as large as the one we were stationed in. Whether it was putting up tents, cleaning common areas, or any other menial tasks our commanding officer would want of us.
We would still hear artillery in the distance, our own artillery was actually set up in the surrounding areas of the camp. The white noise of the camp became the almost constant explosions in the background, I eventually stopped even hearing the far away ones, yet if they were close they had a way of grabbing your attention.
We had no access to the outside world, we were stuck in our own little play society. Our time in the front lines had changed us little, we had experienced modern combat, and we had come out alive.
We were nothing like the old breed, the men who had been in the legionnaires since before the war. They had experienced the disgustingly high casualty rate of the early war, and they had survived, there were not many privates who were part of the old breed, but many NCOs transferred over in the creation of the 9th, these men were rare to see, but you could tell if you saw them. We were not at that level, but we had experienced it, if just a taste.
Even in the worst of situations, we had found a rhythm. We would stay in camp till we were told otherwise, then we would rotate every four days, to the supply line, then the reserve line, over to the firing line, and then back to camp.
The reality of the war was that it was ninety percent waiting for action to come up, then ten percent actually reacting to that action. Though it had become somewhat of a routine, that is not saying that we acclimated well to the battlefield.
The only time we had warm food was the days we spent in the camp, though the food was not amazing in any respect. The worst of it would be the rats. In the trenches rats would be everywhere. One time I fell asleep and awoke to a rat nibbling on my slacks.
The quiet nights would be the worst. If you were stationed on the firing line and it was a particularly dead night, you could faintly hear the chewing of dead bodies in dead man's land. It's a sound that sticks to you, let me tell you that.
It is not only the horrors that it would provide, but also the inconveniences. Rats would be so prevalent that they often got into our food rations and even our clothes, destroying what they couldn't eat.
Seemed as if the rats had a personal vendetta against me personally but every man had to deal with it. Rats were so overflowing that we made it a game, to see how many we would be able to kill. Beside rats there were other things that made our little stay on the front a living hell. For one the rain.
In our section of the line, we didn't have the more advanced trench works of other areas. The most advanced line we had, the reserve line, was fitted with duckboards months after I arrived. But even that would not help us from our poor drainage.
If it would rain heavily, the water would come up past our knees, and we could do nothing about it except try in vain to use our helmets as shovels to pale the water out. If not pouring rain, the ground would often be muddy from prior rain, making it a slippery mess and making us constantly dirty as soon as we stepped foot into the trenches.
Especially later in the year, the cold was an increasing problem. Cold would freeze the ground, as well as us. The overcoat we were given was little help against the cold of the winter. Fires were heavily regulated, so we would never be able to properly warm ourselves on the front. We would find as many scraps of cloth that we could find around camp to add on to our meager winter clothing.