The Red Watch Part 13

We were now in General Haig's command, and rumours were going around that there would be something doing before very long. We were very eager to get into the big drive which was expected in the spring.

The second time we went into the trenches the men were warned to be exceedingly careful of themselves, but to enfilade the German lines with steady sniping so as to keep the fire down.

Every night the companies had to patrol in front of our trenches and examine the wires. This is a very dangerous pastime and everybody wanted to volunteer for the service so I ordered that the men should be chosen by roster, that is, according to their turn. Sergeant Jones got out one night in a turnip patch in front of our lines. There was a German sniper in the same patch so they began to stalk each other.

Jones got his man first, but as the German keeled over he fired and the bullet tore some fingers off Jones' hand and gave him a severe flesh wound in the chest. We got Jones in and bound him up, and brought him to my headquarters where a motor ambulance came and took him away. He was suffering a lot of pain but was game. His wounds were not dangerous.

There are certain laws of the trenches that must be obeyed. First, if you lose your trenches you are told in general orders that you must take them back at once with the bayonet. You must not look for anyone else to do that trick for you. Another is that if a man is wounded the stretcher bearers must bind his wound with a first aid bandage, which each soldier carries in the flap of his coat, after the wound has been cauterized first with tincture of iodine, which is supplied to the officers and bearers in bottles. The man is then kept in the trench till evening when he is taken out on a stretcher. If shot through the lower part of the body a man is kept quiet where he falls for a couple of hours so that nature will herself repair internal bleeding. To at once move a man who is shot through the body is to spoil his chance of recovery.

Our sharpshooters are told to shoot constantly at the enemy's port holes or at any moving figure along the enemy's line. When we see a periscope shoved over the enemy's parapet it is the custom for our sharpshooters to aim at it, and after lowering the aim to fire about six inches from the top of the German parapet. As their parapets are thin we invariably find we have scored a hit. Sometimes duels are indulged in between the German snipers and our sharpshooters. One day a duel of this kind took place between Company Sergeant-Major De Hart and the German who manned the porthole opposite. They fired shot for shot. Our sergeant fired at the German's plate, and he answered back on ours. Shot after shot was exchanged. Alongside of the porthole we had a man watching with a telescope through another porthole. On the tenth shot De Hart scored. His shot went through and the Germans closed up the porthole and went out of business for the day. One afternoon Lieutenant Williams-Taylor of Montreal, a very brave, bright, young officer, came to see me. He was on the headquarters staff and I had promised to show him around. Staff officers seldom want to look over the trenches but he did. I took him along with me and had to caution him several times as he is tall and the parapets in places were low. We went the whole line of the trenches. When we came to Captain McLaren's section one of our men was firing and I asked him what was the matter. He said he was firing at a German who was digging in a sap-head at the salient opposite, about four hundred yards off.

Our man was firing and missing, and every time he fired the German waved a miss, as they do on the rifle b.u.t.ts with his shovel. Now sapping is a most dangerous form of employment. It is dangerous for us and it is our business to make it dangerous for the enemy who is running the sap. What is a sap? Well, this kind of a sap was a connecting trench which the Germans were running out from their line so they could get closer to our line in order to start another line of trenches, or else get close up with a lot of men to attack us. A sapper works on a trench of this kind differently to the way he works on an ordinary trench. He digs and picks ahead of him and throws the loose earth on a blanket between his feet. This earth is carried away in sand bags and put somewhere else, and there is nothing to show that sapping is going on in your front unless an aeroplane detects it.

This sap was being run towards us along an irrigation ditch, and as the German sapper could not see us for trees he did not know that there was a point in our line from which we could see him. He was something of a humorist and thought he was having a lot of fun at our expense. Several shots from our men had failed to stop him. I tried two shots but he still kept on waving the shovel. I gave the rifle to Lieutenant Taylor at his request and pointed out the target. At his first shot the German failed to signal a miss. The men congratulated Taylor on scoring a hit, but he modestly remarked that it was a chance shot and he did not think he had scored. From that time on Lt.

Williams-Taylor was a constant visitor in the trenches. He was in the hottest part of the action at St. Julien, rifle in hand, fighting like a hero.

In the first trenches we occupied the line consisted of two rows of parapets. The front one was called the parapet, the rear the parado.

The latter was to protect the men from the "kick back" of the German high explosive sh.e.l.ls. This form of entrenchment has the disadvantage that if the enemy gets over your front parapet he has a rear parapet which he can use against you and you have great difficulty in getting him out. Where we were later the line consisted of a series of small redoubts or forts connected up with a parapet or curtain. The redoubts were closed at the back and in them were built the dugouts in which the defenders sleep. The redoubts were very strongly held, and if the Germans got over the single parapets they could be driven back with fire from the redoubts and supporting fire trenches.

For some time we had been waiting patiently for the big advance which had been promised as soon as the ground got hard enough for troops to manoeuvre over the fields. In the fall and winter in Flanders the brown clay of the field is so sticky and soft that troops cannot manoeuvre except on the roads. That is why in former wars in the low countries the troops went into trenches during the winter. The weather had been warm and sunny for some days and the creeks, which they designate there with the euphonious t.i.tles of rivers, had fallen a foot or two. There was still plenty of water in the country for the Flemings are great lovers of water. Drains are not used there to carry off water at all. They are used to contain water. Every farm has a series of big ditches, three to six feet wide and about five feet deep, running across it. The water is drained off the land with tile into these ditches, but on the other hand these ditches provide with the aforesaid tile a form of sub-irrigation inasmuch as the water in the dry season flows back into the sub-soil through these same tile.

The ditches play a big part in the economy of the farms. The farmyard buildings are built close alongside the paved roads. The roads are paved with stone blocks about 8"16". The Flemish farmer does his road work once in a hundred years when he turns these blocks over and gives them a fresh surface. A gateway, generally arched, leads into a square around which the farm buildings stand. Next the road will be the dwelling houses all under one roof two storeys high. One part,--the master's,--will have its parlor and parlor bedroom. Then there will be a kitchen, then other rooms for the help, then a dairy. On the other side of the square the pigs and horses have quarters. Opposite on the right from the gate there will be cow stables, then the back of the square will be the barn. The roofs are all connected up. Around the inside of the court yard next the buildings will run a brick sidewalk about six feet wide, and the square in the centre contains a brick walled pit into which the refuse of the stables and houses is thrown.

One corner of this midden is bricked off to form a drainage pit. Of all the smells! Enough said.

One of the most interesting features of the farm is the dairy. Each farm boasts of one, and sometimes as many as three dogs. These dogs are never allowed to roam at will as in England or Canada. They are a fine robust breed, like small mastiffs with pointed wolfish ears. On the outside of each farmhouse one of the most prominent features is a big upright wheel like a water wheel, fully fourteen feet in diameter. All day long the dogs run in this wheel driving the machinery for the dairy. After one dog gets tired he is taken out, and if the farm is a large one another dog is put in. The Flemish dogs certainly have to work for their living and make up for the lazy life of their brethren elsewhere. Many of these dogs have long bodies and run to what we would call the daschhund type. I can quite understand how in trying to catch his tail while working the wheel the process of evolution has brought about the long body of the daschhund.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRENCHES IN WINTER]

According to my recollections of Caesar they had hedges and ditches, beautifully cultivated fields and beer and wine in Flanders two thousand years old. No doubt they had those dog wheels then also. But that does not end the ditch question. Around each group of farm buildings there is what we would call a moat, the biggest ditch on the farm. This moat will be from five to twenty feet deep and fully twenty feet wide. There will be a bridge at the front and back. When the front and back gates are closed no one can get at the Flemish chickens. Now what use are these high-smelling pits and ditches. The Flemings have a use for them. They pump out the contents into great big puncheons on their three-wheeled carts, and they spread this liquid, rich in nitrates, potash and other fertilizing materials over their growing crops. That is why if a man or a horse gets cut in Flanders he has to go and be inoculated against lock-jaw. Wounds do not heal readily here, the soil and air are too rich in bacteria. If a wound is not sterilized at once with iodine a man generally gets gangrene and dies of it.

The farmers in Canada will no doubt be interested in the kind of stock on these farms. Well, first the horses. They have a magnificent breed of heavy horses called the heavy Fleming or Belgian, which is like a great Percheron with a flat bone and a foot or so sawed off its legs.

They are like our Canadian general purpose breed, but much heavier. I have seen horses on almost every farm where my men were billeted that would weigh from 1,600 to 2,000 pounds. These horses are clean-limbed, close-coupled and wonderfully docile and obedient. They answer to the word "Gee," which seems to be an international phrase. A "jerk-line"

on the collar does the rest. Most of the best horses are brought from Belgium. A thoroughbred three-year-old mare will cost three hundred dollars.

The cows on the farms are a fine brown breed, not quite as large as the Holsteins, but they are prolific and splendid milkers. They are not allowed to roam the fields. They are much like the brown Swiss breed or red Devon, such as can be found in Devonshire. What struck me most was their splendid vigor. They are not placid and anaemic such as our average dairy cows, but full of life and action.

The hogs are a large white razor back with long ears that droop over their noses. They give very little trouble and live on comparatively nothing. I have never seen them fed. The farmers say they let them root for themselves until they are getting them ready for market.

The hens are a very fine breed, akin to our Wyandotte in shape, but of various colors. They are great egg producers and kept the soldiers going at sixty cents a dozen. The Fleming, with all his splendid farm land, still makes his own implements. Home made wooden, iron shod ploughs and wooden harrows are the rule. The implement manufacturers are not encouraged.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BATTLE OF NEUVE CHAPELLE

On the morning of the 8th of March, being Monday, the Germans began the week early by heaving some more sh.e.l.ls in the direction of the ruin that guarded our quarters. Some one of our men during the night had trundled a Flemish cart that was in the way in the farmyard, out into the field about two hundred yards away. The vigilant Germans'

aircraft took it for a field gun, and notifying their batteries they proceeded to sh.e.l.l it with shrapnel and high explosive sh.e.l.ls. The cart, however, stood it well. After they quit sh.e.l.ling some of us ventured over to see what damage had been done. Beyond peppering the woodwork the dummy gun was intact. I picked up the fuse of one of the shrapnel sh.e.l.ls and found that the range had been set at 3,400 metres.

The sh.e.l.l in its flight had clipped a small limb off one of the tall sentinel elms in front of our dug-outs. With a compa.s.s we learned the direction of the German battery on the map, which was located behind a hedge at the cross roads east of Fromelles. A telephone message to our guns and a half dozen sh.e.l.ls from our five-inch guns, and this particular German battery troubled us no more.

After the sh.e.l.ling the adjutant of the Royal Scots Battalion on our right came over to see me to talk over the battle which we knew was now due. I had been told of this by General Turner, V.C., the day before. We knew that the big advance was about to begin, and a study of the map told us that the first blow would likely be struck at Neuve Chapelle, with an idea of forcing our line forward several miles so we would gain the command of the high ground back of Aubers, Herlies and Fromelles, a region of coal mines. A branch line of railway ran from La Ba.s.see to Fromelles and supplied the German batteries on our front with ammunition and no doubt took coal back. On the east side of the ridge ran the ca.n.a.l from La Ba.s.see to Lille, also the two lines of railway between the same places. With our footing secure on the Aubers Ridge the gates of Lille and La Ba.s.see would be at our mercy. Then with a mobile field army there would be nothing to stop us till we got to Ghent or Brussels. This was the place to drive the wedge that would cut the German line in two, and once we had Lille we would endanger the whole German lines of communication north and south. It used to be a favourite amus.e.m.e.nt among the officers of our staff in the evenings to take the map of Western Europe, which we kept hanging on the wall, and plan campaigns to drive the Germans out of Flanders. Invariably two lines of advance would be chosen. The first via Lille and Ghent, to Antwerp, along the high ground between the River Scheldt and the Lys. The second route would invariably begin at the Somme and run along the plateau between the Sambre and Meuse via way of Le Cateau, Mons, Charleroi to Namur.

All this is historical ground, the Low Countries of history. Over this ground fought Caesar, Charlemagne, William the Silent, Marlborough, Napoleon and all the great captains of history. We used to calculate the men, the marches and the guns required. We would plan how we would form a great corps army behind the trenches in preparation for a grand advance. The attack would be delivered against two different points. A feint against one position that would bring the German corps reserves, that were always available in some central point, to the a.s.sistance of their comrades. This corps army we knew always come on the third day of a fight. We would have it come to the wrong place. Then a fierce storm of artillery fire would be delivered at the point where the real gap in the line was to be made; a drive through it with the infantry, with plenty of supports; such were Wellington's methods. Then a "steam roller" advance for the objective, surrounding and disregarding fortified villages and redoubts, that would send the Germans scattering right and left for the Rhine. We realized that our task as part of the trench army would be a difficult one, but we had every confidence that the trench army could open the gate for a field army at any point in the line required. But a trench army in so doing would lose one third of its effectives, and putting a regiment in the trenches for a long tour of trench work destroys its initiative as far as field manoeuvring is concerned. All these things were planned and marches calculated. It was figured out where the Germans might make a stand, generally where some famous battle had been fought in the past, how they would be overwhelmed with fresh divisions on their flanks, brought up in motor trucks and their troops blown out of the earth with hundreds of "four point five" and "six-inch" field howitzers which were proving to be such excellent guns for our troops. That is how we planned to drive the enemy out of Flanders. Alas, most of those young ardent soldiers who were so well trained by our military colleges to carry on the staff work of such an army of invasion were doomed to give up their lives in the sodden and muddy trenches. We had confidence that the day would come soon when a big field army would be ready behind us, and it would be only a case of "whoop" and "haloo"

and the German fox would be off full tear for the cover of the Rhine and its fortress strongholds.

For days we had been gaining superiority in various ways over the enemy. Our riflemen dominated theirs. When we took over the trenches first, if we fired one shot they answered with ten. Now they did not answer at all. When our guns fired on their guns for every sh.e.l.l we handed to them they religiously gave us five back. Now they kept still and took their gruel. They had given us trouble with their trench mortars. They had wounded several of my men with the bombs, but they tried to move their mortar into a new position one day and we spotted it. The artillery observing officer in our trenches, young Lieutenant Ryerson, called up the guns and the second sh.e.l.l sent their mortar to smithereens. A great artillery officer was young Lieut. Ryerson, fit to command any battery.

For a long time the German aeroplanes flew over us every morning at sunrise, but now we had a dozen aeroplanes to their one and theirs were rather shy. Our guns had ranged up and down the whole front and we had all begun to get confident and to think that it was only a matter of a few days until we would be on the high road to Brussels.

On top of all this came a very inspiring address from General Sir Douglas Haig, commanding our army. He pointed out that the time had come for a fresh great effort. He also informed us that we were stronger than the enemy, all of which gave us more confidence.

I was told privately that the drive was to take place on our right, and as soon as the brigade on our right had cleared out the Germans on their front that we were to echelon and follow suit and charge.

On our right the Germans were four hundred yards away across the open.

I went down and examined the lines carefully with Captain Daniels, and found that there were two places where a lot of men could be taken out of our trenches and led half way across to the German lines on "dead"

ground, that is ground on which they would be hidden. Lieutenant Schonberger and Captain Warren made a sketch of this ground. I talked the matter over with the captains and they were very much cheered up over the prospect of a fight. Captains MacLaren and Daniels immediately began fixing up exits from their trenches. Steps were cut in the parapets, and in other places openings were made. The opening in the parapets that were used for "listening" posts and for the patrols to go in and out were widened.

What is a listening post? A listening post is made in this way: A gap which is carefully hidden with sandbags is cut in the parapets. Then a sap is run out several hundred feet in zigzag fashion, which terminates in a rifle pit, about five feet deep that will accommodate about four men. At night two sentries sit in this pit and listen to the sounds in the enemy's lines. Sometimes if the rifle pit is wet a couple of barrels are put in and the sentries stand in the barrels.

They notify the trenches of any unusual movement or sounds made by the enemy.

In the evening we left the trenches and went into divisional reserve at Rue Du Quesne. Let me give you some idea of the lay of the country.

There is a road about every kilometer and they run roughly northwest and northeast.

Running southwest and almost parallel with the trenches was Rue Pettion, a short road that terminated at the Fromelles road near our headquarters. The next street, a little over a mile back, is Rue Du Bois, north of the Fromelles Road, south of the Fromelles Road it is called the Rue De Tilleloy. At the corner there was a shrine which had suffered from sh.e.l.l fire and which Canon Scott had immortalized in a poem, the best he has written and the best I have read since the war began. The next street back is the Rue Du Quesne. Right through the centre of our position ran the Fromelles Road. A kilometer southwest, the trench line is crossed by the road to Aubers called the Rue D'Enfer, or in our language, the Road to h.e.l.l. If this road is paved with good intentions I have never seen any of them. It is strongly held by the Germans. The "intentions" take the form of "crump" holes excavated by German sh.e.l.ls in the pavement.

The country on our side is perfectly flat and full of hedges and ditches. Every hedge concealed a battery of guns of all kinds and sizes. On the German side, half a mile back from their trenches, the ground slopes up. The villages of Aubers and Fromelle are on the western slope and the ridge behind is our true objective. On the ridge we could see the church steeples of Herlies to the right and Fournes to the left, while here and there peep the derricks, or as we in America call them the "breakers" of coal pits. Beyond the ridge the land slopes to the Scheldt. It was on the eastern slope of this ridge that Caesar fought his greatest battles. There the Nervli charged across the stream in thousands and fought until hardly a man of them was left, fought until their dead were piled up breast high, fought till Caesar had to take a buckler and spear from a fallen soldier to defend himself. On all sides, from the horizon downward, rows of tall elm trees cast their gaunt leafless branches in the air. Between them were a sea of hedges and green brown boles of pollard willows. Elms generally grew along the roadways and the limbs for fifty feet up are trimmed off annually and tied up into f.a.ggots. The willows grew along the ditches. They are trimmed off about twelve or fourteen feet above the ground and the new branches that sprout out from their trunks provide f.a.ggots for firewood as well as withes for the manufacture of chairs, baskets and hampers. The f.a.ggots are sometimes placed in earthen pits and burned into charcoal, providing an excellent fuel for the interesting Dutch stoves found in the kitchens in this country.

For several days our guns had been registering on the enemy. That is to say, our artillery observing officers would go into the trenches with a telephone connected up with their batteries. Then the battery fires a shot at the enemy's parapets, generally well over. He reports the hit right or left, and then the range is reduced until the object is. .h.i.t. That range direction and elevation is recorded in a register at the gun. The man who sets the gun does not see the object he is firing at at all, but he knows when his gun is trained in a certain line at a certain elevation he will hit that part of the enemy's parapet. We had all kinds of guns ready for the fray. The Canadian sixty pounders under Major McGee a few days before had smashed up the brown tower of Fromelles. This tower had been used by the Germans for an artillery observing station, and for several months the British had been firing at it without success. In about three shots McGee's guns got the tower and a half dozen sh.e.l.ls reduced it to a hopeless ruin so that it was of no use to anyone. The church tower of Aubers followed suit. When the British Tommies heard the "birr" of the five-inch Canadian sh.e.l.ls they all asked whose they were. The Scots thought they had come from Scotland. When they saw Aubers tower disappear in a cloud of dust they inquired again, "What bally gunners are those?"

When told they were the Canadians, they said, "Bravo, Canadians, you are some cla.s.s," and cheered heartily. This gave our gunners a reputation that lasted for the rest of the war.

Besides our five-inch guns we had our eighteen pounder batteries lined up and down behind us, also horse artillery guns from India and an armoured train manned by the navy. They had long six-inch guns that threw a terrible projectile. We had also some new fifteen-inch howitzers that had been brought over from England. "Grandmas" they called these guns because they were short and stout. "Grandma" when fired only gave a low grunt, but when her sh.e.l.l broke four or five miles off, it burst with a "Car-u-m-p" that rattled the windows and shook the earth down in our dugouts.

I had a very interesting time one day riding to a conference at the headquarters of General Sir H.S. Rawlinson, Bt. I came cantering along a road and a sudden turn brought us to a railway crossing. The naval guns were on an armoured train, the Churchill battery on either side of this crossing, and the gunners seemed to have wakened up for they began firing when we were about five hundred yards off. I was riding a powerful "Cayuse" or western horse, which Captain "Rudd" Marshall, with rare good judgment, had selected for me at Valcartier. He turned out to be a splendid charger. Although low set he carried me easily.

He was as wise as an owl and as sure-footed as a cat. It took a good deal of courage on his part to face the naval battery firing for all it was worth, the flames from the black fiery muzzles of the guns almost scorching his hide, but he did it without flinching, although the jar of the guns almost shook him off his feet several times. I can quite realize the task of the n.o.ble Six Hundred had in charging the Russian batteries at Balaclava. I have since seen a moving picture of this battery in action and recognized the raised gate of the railway crossing through which we rode, in the centre of the picture, and I wondered if the battery was "demonstrating" for the benefit of the moving picture photographer when we were pa.s.sing through.

In my rides about the country when the battalion was in billets, I several times ran across "Archibald the Archer," which is the name given to an anti-air craft gun which is mounted on a motor truck and is used against the German aeroplanes. "Archibald" is capable of firing to a great height and very rapidly. He can also move about the country quite readily. When he starts after a Hun avatick there is something going on in the sky. I have watched the Germans outwitting him. Now the aeroplane would dip and glide and circle as the "Archibald" sh.e.l.ls broke about him. Watching with a powerful gla.s.s one could see the airship tremble with the explosion of the sh.e.l.l in its vicinity. "Archibald" does not always get the German observers, but he hastens to make it so hot for them that they cannot observe.

Observation cannot be carried on with much accuracy above five thousand feet, and the ordinary rifle can fire that high. Who named the anti-air craft gun "Archibald" no one knows, but the Belgians are credited with the naming.

The Belgians are great archers, the sport still surviving in that country. At every village you will find a tall mast which you at first think belongs to a wireless station. On examination, however, it will prove to be an archery pole. At the top of a tall pole the target is drawn up by a rope and pulley, and on holidays the local sports indulge in shooting at the mark with a long bow. In every farm house you will find the long bow and a bunch of arrows.

The programme for the big battle ran something like this: Everything being in readiness several divisions were to be brought up behind the trenches at Neuve Chapelle during the night of the ninth and tenth.

Next morning at 7.30 the ball was to open. It was to be a case of "nibbling" as General Joffre calls it. Our guns were to form two zones of fire. The big guns were to smash the first line of trenches for a mile into fragments, while the second line of lighter guns were to rain shrapnel on the ground over which supports might come so that the first line would be isolated. When the first line was sufficiently hammered the infantry was to rip the German parapets with rapid rifle fire, then a charge with the bayonets across the devil's strip, and once inside the first lines of parapets bomb throwing parties were to be told off right and left to clear the trenches. These bombing parties consisted of three or four men with bayonets to lead, and behind them two or three bomb throwers to throw bombs at the enemy ahead of the bayonet men. The leading bayonet men carried a flag which they were to plant in the parapets as they pa.s.sed along so that the supporting infantry would know not to fire on them. The first line of trenches was to be consolidated the first day. On the second day the second line was to be a.s.saulted and on the third day the third line.

In a similar manner everybody knew there was stiff work ahead. That evening my battalion was relieved in the trenches by the Royal Montreal Regiment. When we got back to our quarters we received orders to "sleep on our arms" that night. That meant in our clothes, with our belts and ammunition strapped on, ready to march at a moment's notice.

There was a good bed, but it was sleep in your boots for me. The fact that a blighter of a sniper kept firing off three or four rounds of rapid fire at my headquarters every few minutes, his bullets rattling on the brick wall close to my window, was not very conducive to sleep or good temper. I vowed that I would make it pretty hot for snipers, and agreed with myself there and then to pay a reward of fifty dollars for every sniper captured dead or alive inside our lines.

The German sniper is really a lineal descendant of the impenitent thief. When I say a sniper I do not mean a sharpshooter who fires into our lines from the German lines. I mean one of those horrible creatures that goes about clad in a stolen uniform or the clothes of a Flemish farmer during the day, and at night takes a Leuger automatic pistol and haunts the billets and roads in hope of killing some lone British or Canadian soldier or sentry, whose duty calls him abroad during the night and relieving the dead body of any money or valuables that may be on it. Truly this war developed into a form of warfare akin to that between the whites and the North American Indians.

We suspect a few of the habitants of being snipers and not without some reason. Several of these farmers and small saloon keepers would like to see the Germans win the war so that they could "cash in" on the German requisitions they hold. It happened in this way: When the "Boches," as they call the Germans, overran the country last August and September, they took all the wine from the saloon keepers and brewers, and the best horses, cattle and hogs from the farmers. They paid for these articles with requisitions or orders on the German Government, payable after the war if Germany won. We were constantly coming up against these people that were devastated by the Germans, and when we remarked that the British or French Government would pay the "requisitions" after the war they inform us that they hold requisitions for 5,000 or 10,000 francs given them by the Germans for their property. At one place where I was quartered the proprietor had lost 40,000 francs worth of stock and wine. He was rather "frosty" to the British. That is why we suspected some of being snipers, and there are some cases on record where they were caught red-handed in the act.

Our experience had taught us to put a dead line of sentries several miles behind the line of trenches, and our vigilance was rewarded because the Germans throughout were unable to locate our batteries and were at sea as to what was taking place behind our lines. On the other hand our scouts were so bold that they often crept forward at night in spite of the constant firing of flare lights or rockets by the enemy and had looked right into the German trenches. Conversations were of constant occurrence. "How is your b.l.o.o.d.y Ross Rifle?" a hoa.r.s.e German voice would enquire. "Stick your nose up and see" would go back the prompt reply.