trenchwork

Vidakovic Milotad, spotted the gray silhouettes of Bosnian soldiers moving through the trenchwork.

'It's Gonna Be A Long Year' 2008

Removing his overall, Kerry laid it with his cane upon the scrap-heap, then he climbed down the ladder and found himself in the mouth of that low timbered tunnel, like a trenchwork, which owed its existence to the cunning craftsmanship of Sin Sin Wa.

Dope Sax Rohmer 1921

The _Times_ was full, day by day, of the most thrilling and appalling descriptions of the hideous sufferings of our brave men -- sufferings caused quite as much by the utter breakdown of the sanitary administration as by even the deadly battles and trenchwork; while every post was bringing agonizing private letters appealing for help.

Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History 1906

As an expression of "vision" or "human aspiration," I wonder whether the moon program wasn't more likely a grand example of humans 'propensity for distracting themselves from the hard, incremental, but vital trenchwork of trying to ensure the species survives and prospers?

California Literary Review 2009