A hand lying on the duckboards; a Boche and a Highlander locked in a deadly embrace at the edge of Highwood; the "Cough-drop" with the stench coming from its watery bottom; the shell-holes with the shapes of bodies faintly showing through the putrid water-all these things made one think terribly of what human beings had been through, and were going through a bit further on, and would be going through for perhaps years more-who knew how many?
"An Onlooker in France 1917-1919"
William Orpen
The people who write poems about the divine frenzy of going over the top are usually those who dipped their pens a long, long way from the slimy duckboards of the trenches.
"The Haunted Bookshop"
Christopher Morley
Once in the village of Beaumont, we followed the winding duckboards and were led by small signs painted on wood to the colonel's headquarters.
""And they thought we wouldn't fight""
Floyd Gibbons