On the night of our raid the company was due for relief, but with the change in circumstances two days later found us carrying on and pretty well knocked out from fatigue. We were still uncertain as to the actual position of the enemy, but since we were under machine gun as well as shell fire, it was quite evident that he was not far distant. As there was urgent need for more positive information, I received orders to send out an officer’s patrol for a daylight reconnaissance and more definite news. With a spell of duty extending beyond ordinary limits, and the strain of a night raid added, the company officers were by that time so completely knocked out that I hesitated about asking any of them to undertake this duty, so decided to go myself, taking only my batman, Private Sydney Shearn, with me. For a while the contour of the ground gave us protection, and coming upon an old communication trench about two feet six inches deep, and leading obliquely from our lines in enemy direction, we decided to crawl down the trench as far as possible. It was not a pleasant place for a crawl, as the bottom was an indefinite depth of soft slimy mud.
After following the trench for some distance, it occurred to me that bluff, in the circumstances, was a better ruse than concealment, for the chance of being able to reconnoitre their position to any advantage in full daylight was remote. With better knowledge of the casual trench than we possessed, the enemy was not likely to overlook its possibilities. The better plan, it seemed to me, was to drop all pretence of concealment, show ourselves boldly, and walk towards them across the open. When audacity may be mistaken for sheer stupidity it is often more useful than extreme caution.
In a fold of the ground we left the trench, and immediately upon crossing the ridge we were surprised to meet a Highland officer. I asked him what he was doing out there alone, and in a Scottish accent quite thick enough to be convincing, he explained that he belonged to the Scots Brigade who were on the left of the Australians, that he had got mixed up as to his locality, and wished to know just where he was. It was only the remarkable circumstance of coming upon in out there in no man’s land that made me suspicious.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked. I explained and he replied. ‘Oh, you are making for Gamp and Malt Trench. You’re aware, I suppose, that our fellows bombed it down and captured it last night? They’re in possession of it now.’
‘It’s very strange,’ I pointed out, ‘that we should have no information about it. Are you sure you’re making no mistake about the trench?’
‘No mistake at all,’ he said. ‘It is a wonder you were not informed. Go over and see for yourself—you’ll find our fellows there all right.’
The fact that he admitted being mixed up as to his own whereabouts convinced me that he was mistaken about Malt and Gamp Trench, although there was nothing else in his features, conduct, speech or dress, to excite suspicion or suggest that both of us were at that moment engaged in exactly the same game—bluffing the enemy into the belief that we were a pair of lost sheep, and the Hun likes to ‘catch ‘em alive’ when opportunity offers. I was gambling wholly on that theory. He was increasing his protection, yet doubling his risk in wearing our uniform, for if captured meant sudden death.
The spy who accepts your hospitality in peace time to get information which he will use against your country in war, represents a form of espionage that may be desirable. But the military spy who enters your ranks, wearing your uniform, trusting wholly to his own nerves and mental resources to deceive you and dodge death, is another affair altogether. Discovery means short shrift for a long journey. It was a notorious fact that many of their most daring and successful spies were Austrians, possibly because in features and speech they were better fitted for the enterprise than the Prussian. A German in Scottish uniform, and with an unimpeachable Scottish accent, seemed such an utter absurdity that I could, although still uneasy, find no further excuse for questioning him, though in directing him on his way I was careful to give him directions that would land him at our headquarters instead of the place which he professed a wish to reach.
Moving on across the open it was soon clear that trenches in front were occupied, as we noticed groups of two or three men about seven hundred yards away on our right front. Shearn wished to get down and snipe at them, but I refused to let him as there was still a possibility that the Scottish officer was correct. It was at least a case in which ‘better to be sure than sorry’ held good.
We came within three hundred yards, and could quite clearly make out the line at the junction of Gamp and Malt Trench, with very strong entanglement on our side of it. If the Scots had taken it, they were very slow in reversing the parados and parapet, and getting their protective wire in the spot where it could do most good. Suspicion strengthened again, and as we moved I took quick mental note of every detail of significance. Just then a party of about sixty or eighty men in kilts got out of the trench on the further side, walked openly along the parados for a chain or so, and dipped down out of sight again. It looked like a fatigue party going to or leaving work.
‘A dashed good job you didn’t fire,’ I said. ‘They are Scots all right,’ and the lad agreed.
In spite of the kilts and all convincing detail, some suspicion still lingered. ‘Go slow—lest you halt forever!’ was the warning from within.The old shelter trench was still close by, so I told Shearn to lie down in it and keep a sharp look out while I went on. When near enough to be easily heard I called out, ‘Who are you?’
There was no reply, but one of the kilties beckoned me on. Again I called out. Still no answer but the beckoning arm. Lest the voice should not have carried I semaphored with my arms, ‘Who are you?’ Once more they beckoned silently.
‘Do you think you can find your way back to headquarters?’ I asked Shearn.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think I can.’
Holding my rifle up in the air, and then throwing it ostentatiously out of reach, I in turn beckoned for someone to come forward from the trench and meet me. In reply a soldier, not in kilts, but wearing some drab uniform quite unlike the German field dress, stepped out of the trench and came slowly forward and I advanced to meet him. We were about seventy yards apart, and within a hundred and twenty yards of their wire, when a warning shout came from Shearn lying in the trench beside me.
‘Look out, Sir,’ he called. ‘There are men coming out on both flanks.’
A glance to either side showed me that the time had come for quick thinking. Two men, carrying rifles and unmistakably in German uniforms, were moving out on either side, evidently with the intention of getting behind and cutting me off. At the same instant the muzzles of about sixty rifles showed over the lip of the trench, all aimed straight at me. It was a very tight corner, and the Hun must have flattered himself that he had both in the bag.
Knowing that on the first sign of flight they would fire, and that I could not hope to get very far, I wheeled suddenly and made a dash for life, diving head first into a handy shell hole about thirty yards away. I had barely touched bottom when about thirty bullets flicked the mud all about it. Calculating quickly the time lost in working the bolts of their rifles, I dashed a little further for another shell hole. They were fortunately numerous. Again I just managed to beat their fire, and with a third dash I was into the trench alongside Shearn, landing in about six inches of soft slimy mud.
Had the Huns only known it, we were at their mercy, for our rifles were so choked with mud while dragging through the trench as to be quite useless, and the Bosche riflemen on the flanks were still coming on.
‘We can’t stop them,’ I said to Shearn. ‘Cut for your life and drop every ten yards.’
So in dashing and dropping, always under their fire, we dodged our way across six hundred yards of open ground to the shelter of one of those sunken military roads, so common in that part of France, roads which had been made for the services of peace as well as war, and sunken so that armies using them may be under cover. Readers of history will remember that more than a hundred years ago just such another sunken road was a factor in the tactical movements of Waterloo.
I saw and heard no more of the Scottish officer, whose gift of tongues was quite clearly not shared by anyone else in their line. He must have chuckled inwardly when I gave him wrong directions, for he obviously knew just as much about the location of our troops as his own. In spite of the mortification of having been successfully bluffed, I can even now admire his complete self-possession, his unusual gifts as a linguist. He probably watched the whole play from the shelter of a shell hole, and prudently lay low when, contrary to all reasonable expectations, we got back safely. I kept an eye lifting for the Scottish officer, for there could have been no more satisfactory ending to that exciting afternoon patrol than the pleasure of stalking and killing him.
Passing down the trench later in the day I overheard Shearn giving his mates a vivid account of the adventure.
‘And I tell you one thing,’ he added decisively. ‘I’m not going to be his batman any more. I might have known that he’d take me out on one of his silly stunts.’16
It seemed to be an episode happily ended, but, if true in peace, it is doubly so in war that, ‘the night cometh which no man knoweth.’