For those who are unacquainted with barrages, it may be explained that a box barrage is a heavy shelling put on the enemy lines in the form of a box, taking in the front line and some of the supports in such a manner that those within it cannot get back and reinforcements are unable to come up from the rear. The enemy are then dependent upon shell, and machine-gun, and trench mortar fire in retaliating.
We obtain the identification of the troops opposite by the prisoners taken, as well as getting from them in different ways information useful to us and detrimental to the enemy. Of course the enemy employs like methods, but during the winter of 1916-17 on our different fronts we positively owned No Man's Land.
The handling of the sick is not so easy a matter as the caring for the wounded in the lines, for the reason that it is not what disease the man has that the medical officer must decide as much as whether he has any disease, or has simply joined the Independent Workers of the World. In other words, is he really ill, or is he just suffering from ennui, has he at last become so "fed up" with it all that he has decided to go sick, running the gauntlet of an irate M.O. with the hope of receiving a few hours or days of rest at the transport or in the hospital? It may be a lucky father who knows his own son, but it is a fortunate medical officer who knows his own battalion. If he does it is fortunate for the M.O., for it makes his toils lighter. But it may not be so fortunate for the poor devil who has just decided that once again he will endeavor to "put it over" the doctor. For the latter gets to know the regular parader, and meets him with a suspicious look of recognition.
"Well, Jones, and what is it this time?" asks the M. O. in tones so cold that the poor victim can almost taste Pill No. 9, or Castor Oil as he listens. If he is not ill, but is simply sick and tired of the mud, dirt, rats, lice, discipline, and discomfort--as we all get at times--he will have to tax his ingenuity and his acting ability to convince the doctor that his pains in his legs and back are real, not imaginary; or that his right knee is swollen, when the practised eye of the physician says it is not. If he is an old soldier and knows the game well, he may get away with it, sometimes with the tacit consent of a sympathetic medical officer.