The Paris papers contained a brief paragraph telling of a young girl, a
milliner, in the neighborhood of Grenoble, who had been caught playing
the spy for the Germans and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.
"We don't shoot women spies any more," said a soldier from the Somme
front to whom I spoke of the story. "There have been no women shot for
a long time. They generally get about twelve years at hard labor."
"Are you as much troubled as ever by spies?" I asked.
He laughed. "As long as there is war there will be spies," he replied.
"You can't stamp them out. The only thing you can do is to try to catch
them. It was only a few weeks ago that we caught a woman spy on the
Somme.
"You remember when we took Bouchavesnes? Well, there was not much left
of the village when we got it. Our artillery had knocked it pretty
well to pieces, but we found an old woman there. She had remained all
through the German occupation, and had even managed to hide and stay
behind when all the rest of the civil population had evacuated. She was
in a cellar during our bombardment, and when we went into the town she
came out to welcome us, the only one of the original French inhabitants
of the village remaining. As it was French again, she insisted on
remaining. It was her home and she had succeeded in clinging on all the
time the Germans were there. She saw no reason why she should go when
the French came back into occupation.
"She stayed and did our washing for us. She was busy all the time, and
every morning she would take the wet clothes out and spread them on the
ground to dry. You could see soldiers' shirts and underwear all around
the cellar where she lived, and hanging on all the posts and pieces of
wall.
"The old woman pottered around and worked most industriously at her
tubs. She always came out when there were troops going through the
village and she would talk to the men, find out where they were going,
where they came from and how long they expected to be there. And
whenever she came out from her tubs she would go to her wash, lying out
to dry, examine it, turn it over, rearrange it. She was a wonderful
washwoman. It was a mania with her, having everything just right for
the French soldiers, who had won back her home for her in France.
"But the Germans seemed to know every concentration of troops we made
in that region. Their shells received us every time. We could not
make a move that they did not know all about. We set three men to the
special duty of finding out how the Germans got their information. The
first thing they found out was that there were more air fights over
Bouchavesnes than at any other part of the line. There seemed to be
always a Boche aeroplane hovering over the ruins. They decided that
there must be something about Bouchavesnes which made it a particularly
good observation point. As the old woman was the only thing that
distinguished the place from any other ruined village, they arrested
her.
"At first she denied everything, but the German accuracy in bombarding
our concentrations ceased with her arrest. It does not take a long
argument to convince a drumhead court-martial, and the old woman saw
that the game was up. She then claimed to be French, and said that
she had consented to spy for the Germans partly under threats, partly
because her life had been spared by them, and partly because they had
paid her well, and she had no other way of getting any money to live.
Finally, she acknowledged that she was German and had been purposely
left behind to spy when the Germans got out. She got twelve years at
hard labor."
* * * * *
"Spies work all kinds of tricks. There was the old fellow who came back
to his farm just behind the lines and started to do his fall ploughing
with three horses, a red, a white and a black. He did his signalling by
changing the position of the white horse in the team. He was easy to
catch, as a team, especially a plough team, always works in the same
order. Some of our men who were farmers noticed how he was constantly
changing his horses about. They talked about it among themselves a bit
and at last one of them spoke of it to an officer. The alleged farmer
was investigated and shot.
"Spies are almost sure to get a certain length of time to do their work
before they are caught. We ran across a blacksmith who was one of the
most congenial fellows you ever met. He had his shop right beside one
of the main roads used by the troops in going back and forth to the
trenches and he always had a stock of wine and something to eat. His
shop did not keep him very busy and he was nearly always at his door.
He would talk to the soldiers, give them a drink, ask where they were
going and want to know how long they would be gone, so that he would
be waiting to give them another glass of wine when they came back. He
was very popular with the soldiers, because he was such a good fellow,
always ready with a joke and a glass of wine.
"But our concentrations were known to the Boches. Our men were being
shot down. We never could prepare anything in advance and bring it off
successfully, because the Boches knew just where we were getting ready
to do something. Some of our spy catchers got to work to find the leak.
They hunted through the sector for the best place to pick up news about
troop movements and they found, of course, that all the soldiers were
friendly with the blacksmith. His shop was raided one day. He had been
left behind by the Germans. He had a three months' store of wine and
food in his cellar. Of course, he could give our men wine. But he had,
also, direct telephonic communication from his cellar with the German
lines. He was shot.
"The worst case that I ever knew of--but it was not the only one of the
kind--was an officer in the French army who was a German spy. You can
see from that how thorough the Boches are. That man had been sent from
Germany to France when he was a boy. He had been educated in France and
had gone to the French military schools. He was an artillery officer
and one of the best. He was a lieutenant at the beginning of the war,
but when the Somme offensive began he was a captain in command of a
battery. For all that time he had done his work without being suspected.
"On the Somme he was in charge of his battery, which was firing ahead
of our men during an advance. The battery got a signal that their range
was too short and they were firing into our own men. The sergeant told
the captain, but he said they were firing according to orders and not
to change the range. The battery fired another round and got another
signal from the infantry that they were firing short. The sergeant
spoke to the captain again and the captain lost his temper and swore
at the sergeant. He ordered another round at the same range and the
sergeant refused. The captain tried to fire one of the guns himself.
"It was very important for the Germans to stop our advance at that
point. It might have saved Combles. But the sergeant knew as much
about the situation as the captain. He knew what it meant to have our
troops stopped there. We might have lost a brigade. We might have
lost a division. He threatened the captain with a rifle and arrested
him. It is something to arrest your own captain, but the sergeant did
it, and there was a drumhead court-martial and the captain was shot.
He confessed, when he saw it was all up with him, and bragged of the
two years he had escaped being caught and of what he had done. He was
brave enough, but--Well, think of it! Educated in France, an officer
in the French Army, living at the expense of France, living a lie for
ten years, waiting for 'the day' to betray those who trusted him. It
takes a German to do that." (Told by Fred B. Pitney in the _New York
Tribune_.)