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The Battle of New Year's Day

- Perceval Gibbon

The Germans have made a routine of their attacks, always making them at night and always ineffectually. They advance as far as the barbed wire, 30 yards in front of the trench. There they encounter the full force of the Russian rifle fire and fall back again. The Germans shell without ceasing. All the Russians speak of their profuse expenditure of ammunition. The commander of the trench told me that at the lowest they fired over 3,000 shells on a single day.
Although intermittent firing continued through the night, no attack was made. With the morning the German guns resumed their exhaustive questing along the rear of the trenches, and a big factory to the southward once more became their target. Its great chimney began to acquire a kind of sporting significance, it was so obviously the object of fire in that direction; and bets were going in the trench backing the chimney against the German gunners.

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