Late in the afternoon of that clear day the officer who had observed and who was taking interest in the five bricks saw through his 30-power glass a German hand moving the bricks and the light glint on a pair of German field-glasses levelled amongst them.
The second shell from our gunners removed for ever that post of Beaumont Hamel.
That was one side of the game.
The other was when your own post got given away—as it sometimes did—usually by the flash of a glass in some unskilled hands, by aeroplane photographs, or by some idiot approaching the post when the light allowed of good observation from the German line. Then the first news you had of it was the arrival of the German shells. Followed either the decision to stick it, or the climb, during the later stages of the war in a gas mask, down the ladder and a dash for the nearest dug-out.
From a drawing by] [Ernest Blaikley.
Inside the Observation Post.
Once on a certain famous ridge riddled with our observation posts, I can remember finding a path leading to every post clear in the new fallen snow, and a German aeroplane imminent overhead. Now supposing that plane happened to be a photographic plane, as it most probably was, the whole of the posts would be given away as clearly as if we had sent a map across with them marked upon it.
I can remember how we made false trails in little parties, and never did soldiers double at a faster pace! A fall of snow helped us a great deal as far as aeroplane photographs were concerned, and no doubt the Germans also, but even at such times the German flying man did not come much over our lines.
There was another post which we used for a long time, the only road to which lay along a disused trench in which were several deep shell holes. As this trench was full of a kind of thick dust or mud according to the weather, and as the whole length of it had to be passed over by crawling there was great fear that the trails of the observers would one day be photographed from the air. At one point, therefore, an entrenching tool was left with which each observer obliterated his trail as far as he could. One becomes very careful in these small details when one’s life hangs upon the issue.