Part 4 (1/2)

So the observer sent it back to his officer, and his officer sent it back to the brigade, and the brigade sent it on to the division. The division was a little sceptical. ”That crowd is always making these wild discoveries,” grunted the divisional Intelligence Officer, but he thought it worth while pa.s.sing it on to the Army Corps, who in their turn sent it to the Army; and so, in due course, it arrived in those awe-inspiring circles where lives the great German military brain.

”So that is where they have turned up,” said a very big man with spectacles--a big man in more ways than one. And a note went down in red ink in a particular page of a huge index, to appear duly printed in the next edition of that portentous volume. Only, after the note, there was a query.

Far away at the front, Fritz told his mates over their evening coffee that the new regiment whose heads they had been noticing over the parapet opposite were Australians.

”Black swine dogs, one of them nearly had me as I was bringing the mail-bags,” snorted a weedy youth scarcely out of his teens, looking over the top of his coffee pot. ”I always said that was a dangerous gap where the communication trench crosses the ditch.”

”You babies should keep your stupid heads down like your elders,”

retorted a grizzled reservist as he stuffed tobacco into the green china bowl of a real German pipe.

The talk gradually went along the front line for about the distance of one company's front on either side, that there had been a relief in the British trenches, and that there were Australians over there. One man had heard the sergeant saying so in the next bay of the trench; it meant exactly as much to them as it would to Australian troops to hear the corps opposite them was Bavarian or Saxon or Hanoverian. They knew the English and the French possessed some of these colonial corps. They had been opposite the Algerians in the Champagne before they came to this part of the line.

”They are ugly swine to meet in the dark,” they thought. ”These white and black colonial regiments.”

Fritz lives very much in his dug-out--is very good at keeping his head below the parapet--and he thought very little more about it. His head was much fuller of the arrival of the weekly parcel of b.u.t.ter and cake from his hardworking wife at home, and of the coming days when his battalion would go out of the trenches into billets in the villages, when he might get a pa.s.s to go to a picture theatre in Lille--he had kept the old pa.s.s because a slight tear of the corner or a snick opposite the date would make it good for use on half a dozen occasions yet. He did not bother his head about what British division was holding the trenches opposite to him.

But that divisional Intelligence Officer did--he worried very much. He wanted to get a certain query removed from an index as soon as possible.

It is always best to get information for nothing. A good way to do this is to make the enemy talk; and you may be able to make him talk back if you send over a particular sort of talk to him. So a message was thrown over into our lines, ”Take care”; and ”You offal dogs must bleed for France.”

This effort did not fetch any incriminating reply; and so, on a later night, a lantern was flashed over the parapet, ”Australian, go home,” it winked. ”Go in the morning--you will be dead in the evening; we are good.”

Later again appeared a notice-board, ”Advance Australia fair--if you can.”

Indeed, Fritz became quite talkative, and put up a notice-board, ”English defeat at sea--seven cruisers sunk, one damaged, eleven other craft sunk. Hip! Hip! Hurrah!”

This did draw at last some of the men in the front line, and they slipped over the parapet a placard giving a British account of the losses in the North Sea fight. The putting up of notices is an irregular proceeding, and this placard had to be withdrawn at once, even before the Germans could properly read it. The result was an immediate message posted on the German trenches, ”Once more would you let us see the message?” Still there was no sign from our trenches. So another plaintive request appeared on the German parapet, ”We beg of you to show again the table of the fleet.”

But they were Saxons. Clearly they did not believe all that their Prussian brother told them about his naval victory. Another day they hoisted a surrept.i.tious request, ”Shoot high--peace will be declared June 15.” They evidently had their gossip in the German trenches just as we have it in ours--and as we had it in Sydney and Melbourne--absurd rumours which run all round the line for a week, and which no amount of experience prevents some people from believing.

”After all, these 'furphies' make life worth living in the trenches,” as one of our men said to me the other day. All the Germans, in a certain part of the line opposite, now firmly believe that the war is going to end on August 17th.

But this is merely the gossip of the German trenches telegraphed across No Man's Land. I do not know how far the divisional Staff Officer satisfied himself as the result of all his messages, but he did not satisfy the gentleman with the big index.

”There is one way to find out who is there,” the Big Man said, ”and that is always the same--to go there and bring some of them back.”

And so twice in the next three weeks the German artillery fired about 30,000 worth of sh.e.l.ls, and a party of picked men stole across the open, and in spite of a certain loss on one occasion they took back a few prisoners. And the query went out of the index.

It would be quite easy to present to the German for a penny the facts which it cost him 60,000 and good men's lives to obtain. When you know this, you can understand why the casualties reported in the papers do not any longer state the units of the men who have suffered them.

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT BATTLE BEGINS

_France, July 1st._

Below me, in the dimple beyond the hill on which I sit, is a small French town. Straight behind the town is the morning sun, only an hour risen. Between the sun and the town, and, therefore, only just to be made out through the haze of sunlight on the mists, are two lines--a nearer and a farther--of gently sloping hill-tops. On those hills is being fought one of the greatest battles in history. It is British troops who are fighting it, and French. The Canadians are in their lines in the salient. The Australians and New Zealanders--it has now been officially stated--are at Armentieres.