The shower includes a stainless steel shower pan and a duckboard.
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"At the end of the war, various utility systems, marginal at best, failed completely during the winter, adding to the bleakness of existence in the mud-street and duckboard reservation," the anonymous author of the report notes.
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The RE companies suffered heavy casualties in these actions.Seton-Hutchison, pp. 100–6. A duckboard track in the Ypres Salient, October 1917. The division was relieved on 20 April.
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The station is located on Laroque Avenue. The station is unique, in that the flooring is composed of duckboard. This is explained by the proximity of one of six "FCBA" sites, the Institut Technologique Forêt Cellulose Bois-construction Ameublement (formerly CTBA).
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Odgers 1994, pp. 93–94. By the time the AIF was withdrawn from the Somme to re-organise, they had suffered 23,000 casualties in just 45 days. 4th Division field artillery brigade on a duckboard track passing through Chateau Wood, near Hooge in the Ypres Salient, 1917. In March 1917, the 2nd and 5th Divisions pursued the Germans back to the Hindenburg Line, capturing the town of Bapaume.
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The division then spent a terrible winter, doing tours of duty in the Passchendaele Salient. While the infantry attempted to make small gains, the engineers constructed concrete dugouts, underground galleries and drainage systems. Important achievements were the construction of a double duckboard track (the 'Mule Track') as far into the salient as Tyne Cot, and a Decauville narrow-gauge railway as far as Crest Farm.Seton-Hutchison, pp. 75–8.
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Everything went wrong from the start; everyone thought that the attack would fail and morale was plummeted. It appeared that the Germans realised that an attack was imminent the night before, when the Royal Engineers went forward to mark the jumping- off lines for the attack. There was only one decent road for the 32nd Division and a duckboard track for the 25th Brigade of the 8th Division to reach the assembly positions.
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Stenbock visited the spa in the village of Ramlösa, which was inaugurated as a health resort on 17 June 1707 by the provincial physician of Scania, Johan Jacob Döbelius. Since the source of the well, according to Döbelius, had a medicinal effect, Stenbock saw a personal incentive to support it, since he suffered from kidney stone disease. Stenbock supported ground clearance around the spa and its decoration with a wooden duckboard and some primitive wooden buildings.Marklund (2008), pp.
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Study for Gassed Soldiers, John Singer Sargent, 1918. Yale Centre for British Art A photograph similar to Gassed of British troops blinded by poison gas during the Battle of Estaires, 1918 The painting measures . The composition includes a central group of eleven soldiers depicted nearly life-size. Nine wounded soldiers walk in a line, in three groups of three, along a duckboard towards a dressing station, suggested by the guy ropes to the right side of the picture.
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The opening barrage line planned for the 3rd Australian Division was moved back but this still required the infantry to advance for to reach it. Duckboard tracks had been extended to the line held on 9 October, which allowed infantry to move up on the night of 11 October in time for the attack, despite rain and a German gas bombardment on Gravenstafel spur. High winds and heavy rain began about zero hour () and lasted all day.
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Australian soldiers walking along duckboards during the Battle of Passchendaele A duckboard is a type of boardwalk placed over muddy and wet ground. During World War I, duckboards were used to line the bottom of trenches on the Western Front because these were regularly flooded,Imperial War Museum, and mud and water would lie in the trenches for months on end. The boards helped to keep the soldiers' feet dry and prevent the development of trench foot, caused by prolonged standing in waterlogged conditions. They also allowed for troops' easier movement through the trench systems.
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"Instruction no. 6" covered engineer and pioneer work for the building of strong points, at the places determined in "Divisional Order 31". An Engineer Field Company was attached to each brigade and the Pioneer Battalion was made responsible for the maintenance and extension of communications, including tramways, mule and duckboard tracks and communication trenches. Two supply routes were defined and next day, engineer officers were added to the liaison system within brigade headquarters. Communication within the division was addressed by "Instruction No. 7" on 16 September, which discussed telegraph, telephones and cable burying; visual communication via six reporting stations; wireless and power buzzers.
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After the First Battle of Passchendaele no man's land ran through the middle of Poelcappelle, where a few stones were still standing. From the west, the Langemarck road had almost disappeared and intelligence officers searched shell-holes for foundations to determine the route. Movement to the front line was via of duckboard track; up and down lines had been laid but congestion and German artillery-fire meant constant interruptions to movement. On 12 October, the 55th Brigade of the 18th (Eastern) Division had attacked Poelcappelle in snake formation and been repulsed after every piece of the attackers' equipment containing moving parts had been jammed by mud.
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The pursuit ended at the River Selle. For its assault crossing of the river on 17 October (the Battle of the Selle), XIII Corps had its 6-inch guns, including 545th Siege Bty (now in 73rd Army Brigade, RGA), sited well forward so that they could hit the crossings over the Sambre Canal, which carried the German lines of supply (and retreat). The assault went in behind a massive bombardment, the attacking infantry crossing the Selle by means of duckboard bridges. By the end of the day Fourth Army had forced its way across the Selle and broken into the German Hermann Stellung I defences.
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On 30 September, the 4th Army issued an operation order for more field artillery bombardments between British attacks and that at least half of the heavy artillery ammunition was to be used for observed fire on captured pill-boxes, command posts and machine-gun nests, duckboard tracks and field railways. Gas bombardments were to be increased on the British front line and artillery emplacements, wind permitting. Pillboxes were to be recaptured, defensive positions improved and the British infantry were to be harassed by patrols and diversionary bombardments. The British were to be compelled by spoiling attacks to reinforce their forward positions and to counter-attack, during which they could be engaged by the German artillery.
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The area to the east and south of the ruins of Passchendaele village was held by posts, those to the east being fairly habitable, unlike the southern ones; from Passchendaele as far back as Potijze, the ground was far worse. Each brigade spent four days in the front line, four in support and four in reserve. The area was quiet apart from artillery-fire and in December the weather turned cold and snowy, which entailed a great effort to prevent trench foot. In January, spells of freezing cold were followed by warmer periods, one beginning on 15 January with torrential rain and gale-force winds, washing away plank roads and duckboard tracks.
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Pioneers laying duckboards at Passchendaele On 24 October the battalion moved into White Mill Camp at Elverdinghe in the Ypres sector, A and B Companies later moving to Red Rose Camp. The work was to maintain the constantly-shelled tracks and complete a duckboard track known as 'Railway Street' while the rest of the division took part in the Second Battle of Passchendaele The camps were regularly shelled and bombed, and the Lewis gun detachment took up forward positions to deal with low-flying aircraft. On the night of 31 October/1 November the camp and divisional area received a heavy bombing raid and the battalion suffered numerous casualties.Dunn, pp. 138–44.
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Wire (1919), collection of the Imperial War Museum, London The Ypres Salient at Night (1918), collection of the Imperial War Museum, London In six weeks on the Western Front, Nash completed what he called "fifty drawings of muddy places". When he returned to England, he started to develop these drawings into finished pieces and began working flat-out to have enough pictures ready for a one-man show in May 1918. While in Flanders Nash had mostly worked in pen-and-ink, often over painted in watercolours, but in England he learnt, from Nevinson, to produce lithographs. The 1917 drawing Nightfall, Zillebecke District showing soldiers walking along a zig-zagging duckboard became the 1918 lithograph Rain.
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Engineers laboured all summer to keep roads open and to lay new ones, build corduroy roads of logs and railway sleepers and laid duckboard tracks as the front moved eastwards. The slow Anglo-French advance increased the distance that supplies had to be carried, from the intact road system in the rear to the front line on the far side of the beaten zone, which brought the transport system close to collapse whenever it rained. More vehicles on the roads accelerated their decrepitude and Bean wrote that many of the lorries broke down and were pushed aside. Haig wrote on 21 November that Stretcher-bearers worked four to a stretcher, reinforced by pioneers, men from divisional supply trains and anyone else who could be spared, including prisoners.
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The first oil painting he made was The Mule Track in which, amidst explosions from a bombardment, are the tiny figures of soldiers trying to stop their pack animals charging away along another zig- zagging duckboard. Switching to oils allowed Nash to make far greater use of colour and the explosions in The Mule Track contain yellow, orange and mustard shades. The canvas The Ypres Salient at Night captures the disorientation caused by the changes in direction of the defensive trenches at the Front, which Nash would have been familiar with, and which was exacerbated at night by the constant explosion of shells and flares. Whilst in France Nash had made a pen-and-ink drawing he called Sunrise, Inverness Copse.
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The following day the battalion held the captured line, under continuing artillery fire. In preparation for the next attack (the Battle of Poelcappelle on 9 October), 12th Gloucesters was in Sanctuary Wood, where it was under observation and artillery fire from the enemy and movement was restricted to duckboard tracks. On 8 October the battalion was split, with two companies providing carrying parties and the other two in the support line behind 1st Bn Cheshire Regiment. When the attack was delivered, the companies in Sanctuary Wood provided carrying and burial parties, while the two in the support line were pinned by artillery and could not be relieved until 10/11 October. Despite not actually attacking itself, 12th Gloucesters lost 359 casualties (150 from gas), of whom 88 died, in the period 1–12 October.
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A 4th Army operation order of 30 September pointed out that the German position in Flanders was restricted by the local topography, the proximity of the coast and the Dutch frontier, which made local withdrawals impossible. The instructions of 22 September were to be followed, with more bombardment by field artillery, using at least half of the heavy artillery ammunition for observed fire on infantry positions in captured pillboxes, command posts, machine-gun nests and on duckboard tracks and field railways. Gas bombardment was to be increased on forward positions and artillery emplacements, when the wind allowed. Every effort was to be made to induce the British to reinforce their forward positions, where the German artillery could engage them, by making spoiling attacks to recapture pillboxes, improve defensive positions and harass the British infantry with patrols and diversionary bombardments.
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In 1916, Davis gained his first experience in journalism, working with the Denver Times and Albuquerque Morning Journal. He acquired further experience in journalism writing for the Army newspaper The Pontanezan Duckboard while serving in the United States Army Intelligence Corps (1917-1919) during World War I. Upon his return to the United States, Davis, with the exception of a few months working for the Burns Detective Agency, spent the years between 1919 and 1937 working for various newspapers, including Denver Post (1919), Rocky Mountain News (1920-1922), San Francisco Examiner (1921), Seattle Post-Intelligencer (1930), and Buffalo Times (1931-1937). Davis' fiction efforts were first published by a number of pulp magazines during the 1920s. In 1926, he married artist and writer Martha Wirt. Their only child, David Brion Davis, was born on February 16, 1927, in Denver, Colorado. Davis resided in Hamburg, New York in the late 1930s.
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Shells and all manner of equipment lay around and the II Anzac Corps sent reserve units systematically to salvage equipment. At the beginning of December, the right flank of the New Zealand Division lay on a small rise at the lip of the plateau, at the high Jericho pillbox, beyond which the ground declined to the Scherriabeek. The left flank was at Joppa, a German shelter in the cellar of a demolished house, behind which the ground fell gradually towards a crater field containing the Veldhoek pillboxes. A duckboard track ran through Veldhoek, past the Tower pillbox and up the slopes of the main ridge to the Menin road, which lay almost unrecognisable to the south, diagonal from the New Zealand front line to Gheluvelt and at Veldhoek it was away but on the New Zealand front was on the west side of the Scherriabeek valley, about distant.
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The 33rd Division was relieved by the 50th Division on 13 December and the area to the east and south of Passchendaele was held by posts, those to the east being fairly habitable, unlike the southern ones; from Passchendaele as far back as Potijze, the ground was far worse. Each brigade spent four days in the front line, four in support and four in reserve; on 18 December, thirteen Germans with four machine-guns were captured, having got lost in no man's land. The area was quiet apart from artillery-fire and the 50th Division was relieved by the 33rd Division from 1918, then came back into the line from 29 January. From the 8th Division relieved of the 14th (Light) Division in cold and snowy weather, which entailed a great effort to prevent trench foot. In January, spells of freezing cold were followed by warmer periods, one beginning on 15 January with torrential rain and gale force winds, washing away plank roads and duckboard tracks.
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Dispersed and camouflaged German defences, using shell-hole positions, pillboxes and with much of the German infantry held back for counter-attacks, meant that as British units advanced, they became weaker and disorganised by losses, fatigue, poor visibility and the channelling effect of waterlogged ground, they met more and fresher German defenders. The German defensive system had been more effective in the unusually rainy weather in August, making movement much more difficult and forcing the British to keep to duckboard tracks, easy to identify and bombard. Objectives were chosen to provide the British infantry with good positions from which to face German counter-attacks, rather than to advance with unlimited objectives. The Fifth Army had set objectives much closer than after 31 July and the Second Army methods of September were based on SS 144 The Normal Formation for the Attack (February 1917), reflecting the experience of the fighting in August and to exploit opportunities made possible by the reinforcement of the Flanders front with another before 20 September.
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