No Man’s Land in its aspect in this locality presented a hard problem for night observation, in that many small trees had been smashed by artillery fire, leaving stumps that an observer in the night might take to mean a sentry.
One such object appeared to me because of its absolute immobility to be surely a tree trunk. I am mighty glad I didn’t jump at my first conclusion.
I told my men to “get down,” which brought them prostrate to the ground. I ordered them to hold that position until I could find out what the strange figure in the night might mean.
I crawled toward it and crawled for at least twenty yards, before I was positive that it was no shell-broken tree. I saw the man move. He was not moving watchfully but wearily. He had a bayoneted rifle in his hand, and as I moved toward him he stuck the bayonet point in the turf and leaned on the butt in the manner of a man thoroughly tired out.
It was all very silent in No Man’s Land and I had to move with extreme caution particularly to avoid ruffling the gravel over the stones. There wasn’t much shrubbery left which I might crackle in my advance. Such as was there was so dampened by rains and mud that you could pass over it without making a sound.
So I got to this man without his having the slightest suspicion of my approach. And it was the meanest job I had to perform of the war. Because when I got to him I saw that he was really standing at the top of a tunnel. What this tunnel might mean I did not know. But, of course, I knew that it led somewhere and that at the end of it this single soldier would have reinforcements.
Other men who had gone over No Man’s Land before me had given information which guided me in this situation. Such sapper tunnels had been frequently made in No Man’s Land by the Germans to meet and defeat British patrols. The usual thing had been if you saw a man standing in No Man’s Land to shoot at him. He was supposed to be wary enough to detect your advance and while jumping down into his tunnel protection to let go a discharge of his rifle which was a signal to the other end of the tunnel of an enemy patrol approach. At this other end from twelve to eighteen men would be stationed. The single man at one end of the tunnel was merely bait to betray the scout patrol into firing at him. At which the Germans would send half of their force through the tunnel to support their single sentry while the other half at the other end of the excavation would take to the surface, speed along and come on top of the discovered entrance to the tunnel. In this wise they would have the enemy patrol surrounded.
I had never been in one of these engagements before, but I had been thoroughly well instructed as to what you must look out for. This sentry would have been a simple mark for a revolver shot. He did not know that I was there. He stood at ease, a perfect target. But the report of a pistol shot would have been as perfectly a report to his comrades of our presence.
To get him, as I have learned in America to say, “right,” my duty was to knife him. I got up behind him all undetected. I never felt such miserable hesitation or qualms of conscience in my life. I had lost all revulsion at destroying human life when it was German human life, because I had already seen that they rather took an insane joy in killing their fellow man. But to sneak up behind one and stab him to death was a very difficult thing to do. I had to bring into my mind the reason and cause for my act. There were dead men right behind me in No Man’s Land to create a moral support.
And when I felt this I did get up and without hesitation stabbed him in the back of the neck. I stabbed him in the neck so that he might not be able to make outcry.