These we located on the map by intersection of compass bearings and they were shelled by our artillery.
From the o. p. described on the last page we got some long range rifle shooting one morning. It was one of those still spring days without a breath of air stirring, no bright sunlight, an overcast sky but air very clear. An artillery observer would describe it as a high visibility day. A couple of observers had been studying the country behind the German line. About 1100 hundred yards from us we could see a house standing broadside with a road stretching away to the east beyond. This road passed by the south end or gable end of the house. In the side facing us were a door and two windows. They had noted some Germans going in or out of the door and standing around outside quite unconcerned. It was quite evident that this place had not been subject to either rifle fire or m. g. fire and Fritz was quite at home there. I think it must have been a quarter masters stores or its equivalent in German.
The observers sent for me and we decided to try a shot at Fritz. I picked out a spot in the middle of the tile roof that faced us for a target. We wanted to register and make sure we had the range perfectly before trying to snipe at that distance. My first shot broke a tile and with the telescope the observers saw the pieces slide down to the eaves dropping to the earth. We had the range to a hair and the lateral was perfect. If the Fritzes noted the shot at all, they probably took it for a stray bullet.
At the right corner of the house wall and about shoulder high there was a white patch as though somebody had cleaned a paint brush on the corner of the wall. I used this as an aiming mark, got the rifle bedded down comfortably in a sandbag rest and waited. Presently the observers said there was a man coming around the house from the back. He came toward us along the south gable. I waited until he was in line with the house corner and the white spot and fired. He staggered out to the right about 15 feet, fell and lay there. Another man came out and I shot him also. This one appeared to be dead but the first one still moved. In a little while a wagon came down the road at a gallop and swung in behind the house. Two men with a stretcher removed the first man shot. We did not fire any more shots then but after a while we decided to put some rapid fire through the door and windows, and along the roof about two feet above the eaves. We did this, but on after-thought, it was a foolish move for it told them that the shots were not strays or accidental and put them on their guard. Also it betrayed our sniping post badly. A cold-blooded recital of a typical incident exactly as it occurred (Confirming Sherman in his name for war).
We had another post off to the right flank and one day there were three of the boys aloft in it when Fritz put 12 shells into it, but the boys escaped with only scratches.
Estaires was a pretty little town, but it was destroyed by the Germans during their big drive in the spring of 1918. During the time we were billeted there he bombed it with an aero plane. There was a fat old cook who did the honors for the officer’s mess. He had his cook house in a shed or outbuilding. When the plane came over there was a transport wagon standing in the cook house. A bomb dropped there and the roof fell down on top of the transport wagon. The wagon being there saved the cook’s life.
We were not getting enough exercise so while we were here Knobel took us out through the country on forced marches to keep us in trim. We had to make a road report of each trip giving details of everything en route. That Knobel was a wonder. He could march at a fast clip through a town, and then sit down drawing a perfect map with the names of all the streets, principal buildings, squares etc. together with a hundred and one other details that we did not notice at all.
At La Saillee we met a troop of Bengal Lancers and I never expect to see finer looking mounted troops. They were a treat to see and a thing of beauty. These Bengalis were a part of the Army of India, some portion of which had been in the line to our right.
The Gurkhas or Gurcas a hill tribe, looking like Japanese only heavier built, had been next to us in the line for a short time. Their patrols were out next to us at night, and it was a creepy sensation when alone and expecting to encounter some of them. They were like tiger cats at that kind of work, and as, silent, swift and deadly. They went armed with a kuri (big knife) of different sizes and weights. The heaviest knife weighed seven lbs, and was close to two feet long with most of the weight well out toward the point. They could flatten themselves blending into the ground or shrubbery and snip off a man’s head so quick he wouldn’t know it unless he happened to shake his head. There were some tall stories going the rounds about doings at night along the front. In their case however truth was stranger than fiction. I know of an authentic case that occurred just to our right. The Gurkha scout had noted the head of a German sentry over the parapet at night. Like a jungle cat he slipped through, and under the wire and flattened himself against the sandbags of the enemy breast’work directly in front of that sentry. At intervals he would reach up with one hand and make a tap-tapping noise on the baked clay. After awhile the sentry got curious no doubt thinking of a rat or stoat and stretched forward to see what was making that peculiar noise–Zip. Away went his head and it was brought back as a trophy or souvenir. These were great troops in an attack. As long as they could see the enemy and had something definite to fight they were fearless fighters. The difficulty was to control them. They forgot all about schedules and time limits. They would keep on and on and then get all cut to pieces with their own barrage fire. At close quarters they would ditch their Enfield and bayonet and wade in with the big knife. They would seize the enemy’s bayonet with their left hand and slash off his head with the right. It became necessary to equip them with a heavy gauntlet glove for the left hand, as the dressing stations were full of them after a fight all wounded in that way.
On one of our route marches and road patrols we had an experience with a German spy. We, of the scout section in charge of Knobel were out on our own, marching south on a road running parallel to the front line system and about a mile to the rear of it. Here we met a tall man walking north. He was dressed up as though he had just stepped off one of the main boulevards of Paris. A spotless black suit and tall tile hat, gloves and walking stick, a regular fashion model. This looked a little peculiar to say the least for you never saw anyone dressed to that degree in country that close to the front lines. He walked with the stiff necked straightness of a military officer, and in his case, the clothes were a very thin disguise of the soldier underneath.
He had his mustache twisted out to two needle points as affected by some French gentry. He eyed us as we went by. Two of us sized him up then as worthy of investigation, but the sergeant said he did not want to make a foolish mistake and passed him up. He only got a short way down the road when some artillery men held him up and sure enough, he was an enemy officer spy. He had overdone the dressing part. I suppose he was going by pre-war standards and did not realize he was so conspicuous in his elaborate toilette and high tile.
There was another spy case while we were on this part of the front that seemed like a fairy tale so strange it was. At Labutillerie, as before stated, we had a couple of batteries of horse artillery concealed in the hedge rows a few hundred yards behind our front lines. Immediately in their vicinity there still lived an old farmer of Flemish or ex-German nationality. He still tilled his little fields enclosed by their thorn hedges. He was the owner of an old white horse, a white cow and also an aged wife. The batteries were concealed on the margins of his estate in willow clumps and hedgerows. Some of the gunners complained that the old man would take his white cow on fine days when the visibility was good and, leading it on a long rope would get directly in front of the gun position running his cow around in circles.
This they claimed was done in front of different gun positions and soon after that the guns were shelled by the enemy. He also pulled off something of the sort with the old white horse for variation I suppose. Not much attention was paid to these tales however. It was also reported that smoke signals or smoke puffs were sent up from his chimney after the manner used by the Red Indians and some of the Zulu tribes in Rhodesia. These they claimed were unmistakably signals and worked out in a code.
On account of all these rumors Sgt.