IDENTIFIED
_France, June 28th._
It was about three months ago, more or less. The German observer,
crouched up in the platform behind the trunk of a tree, or in a chimney
with a loose brick in it--in a part of the world where the country
cottages, peeping over the dog-rose hedges, have more broken bricks in
them than whole ones--saw down a distant lane several men in strange
hats. The telescope wobbled a bit, and in the early light all objects in
the landscape took on much the same grey colour.
The observer rubbed his red eyes and peered again. Down the white streak
winding across a distant green field were coming a couple more of these
same hats. I expect Fritz saw a good number of them in those days. Many
of the wearers of those hats had never seen an aeroplane before; much
less two aeroplanes, fighting a duel with machine-guns at close range,
10,000 feet over their heads, or being sniped at by a battery of hidden
15-pounder guns, every shot marking itself for the open-mouthed
spectators by its little white cotton-wool shell burst.
The German observer spent several hours jotting painful notes into a
well-thumbed pocket-book, staring in the intervals through his
telescope. Then the tree shook. Something ponderous from below felt its
way up the creaking ladder. A red face, like the face of the sun, peered
over the platform.
"Anything new, Fritz?" it puffed.
"Ja; those new troops we have noticed yesterday--I think they were
Australians."
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 passing 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 butter 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 pass to go to a picture theatre in Lille--he had
kept the old pass 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 surreptitious 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 shells, 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.