Defence Operations

In the platoon position, our living quarters were a dugout usually with lots of overhead rubble, rocks, sandbags and so on, so that other than a direct hit on it, you were pretty safe even during any enemy or sometimes friendly shelling activity. The fire trenches, the fire pits, where you would station in every section, 24 hours a day, you’d have one or two men on guard, and these were connected by a trench network. And depending on the type of soil, they could be deep enough so that you could walk upright through them and not be seen, or in rocky areas or in a position you’d just taken over, they might be shallow and you would have to use them as a crawl trench, but the whole system was interconnected. The traditional two sections up, one back for all around defence, you tried to do that but it was dictated largely by the topography, the size of the hill. Traditionally, you’d like to have two platoons up and one back; again, the size of the hill would tell you that. You’d like to have a company in reserve, sometimes you could, sometimes you couldn’t. So the depth in the defensive position would vary from one place to another, but all around defence nonetheless, covered from all sides. The enemy were notorious for their ability to infiltrate, surround and attack from behind so it was a matter of making sure that all night, every night, you had people who were awake and the Platoon Sergeant and the Platoon Commander would alternate in making the rounds of the fire trenches just making sure people were awake and occasionally somebody would doze off. We had, as I recall they were British device, mock-turtle soup. I can’t remember what else, but you could ignite them with an igniter. They were in, what else, a brown container, army issue, but you could ignite this thing just like a grenade and it would heat the contents of the container. So what you did was, you took these around to the guys to keep them awake at night so they could have a nice hot drink, particularly in the cold weather.