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Description
It was customary to hang jam jars and cans on the barbed wire in no-mans land to act as alarms.

If German reconnaissance parties tried to creep up the the Allied lines the troops would hear the rattling of the jars and cans as the Germans crept through the wire.

Arriving at the front line during the dark of night to relieve the duty battalions, one officer heard the familiar rattling from the wire, he quickly organised his defences. An officer from the battalion heading back through the communication trenches told him that the severity of the fighting had not allowed them to get out to the wire to attach anything at all.

As the sun rose the fresh troops were able to look over the rim of the trenches with periscopes, they were met with the sight of bodies, bits of bodies and skeletons stripped by crows hanging up and down the wire, rattling in the wind... still left from the first day of the Battle.

Description
It was customary to hang jam jars and cans on the barbed wire in no-mans land to act as alarms.

If German reconnaissance parties tried to creep up the the Allied lines the troops would hear the rattling of the jars and cans as the Germans crept through the wire.

Arriving at the front line during the dark of night to relieve the duty battalions, one officer heard the familiar rattling from the wire, he quickly organised his defences. An officer from the battalion heading back through the communication trenches told him that the severity of the fighting had not allowed them to get out to the wire to attach anything at all.

As the sun rose the fresh troops were able to look over the rim of the trenches with periscopes, they were met with the sight of bodies, bits of bodies and skeletons stripped by crows hanging up and down the wire, rattling in the wind... still left from the first day of the Battle.