I do not think that scouts ever got very far into the German lines; at any rate, during the continuance of trench warfare. To do so was well-nigh impossible, and behind the German battle-front the place of the scout was taken by the spy or secret service agent.
But to return to No Man’s Land. There was a certain sergeant who got a D.C.M. for removing a trench board. A raid was projected by us, and, as usual, a careful rehearsal had been gone through. The scheme was to attack a certain sector of enemy trenches about two hundred yards long. This length of trench had to be blocked off at each end, so as to prevent assistance coming to the enemy down the trench from either flank.
Two parties were therefore told off to capture and hold the two points, which were to be the limits of our raid. Both parties went over, the northern party arriving in strength, but the southern had casualties from machine-gun fire, and finally only the sergeant and one private arrived in the enemy trench. Here the private was killed before the enemy fled, and there was only the sergeant to form the block and keep off the reinforcements which were sure to come.
The sergeant, however, was a man of resource, and he swiftly removed the duck-board from the trench draining well—a large sump hole, or pit, which lay between him and the path taken by the retreating Germans. The trenches are often drained by pits of this kind, dug in the middle of the right-of-way, and bridged by a duck-board laid across them. In these pits there collected a mass of liquid mud as thick as glue. The sergeant removed the duck-board, and relaid it eight or ten feet on his side of the mud-hole. Then he went round the corner of the next traverse, and waited to see what would happen.
Meantime, the main raiding party had got to work, and soon enemy reinforcements came rushing along the trench towards the sergeant. Seeing the duck-board ahead of them, they mistook the position of the mud-hole, and in they crashed. Soon the hole was as full of men as is a newly-opened tin of sardines. Next the sergeant opened fire upon them. The whole raid was a glorious success. Prisoners were taken, and German dug-outs blown up—a result that could hardly have occurred had it not been that the sergeant had the sense and acumen to remove the duck-board; thus, by a very simple action, holding up quite a mass of reinforcements.
There is another raid story, for which I do not vouch, but which was firmly believed in the First Army.
All enemy movement was watched by aeroplanes, and photographed and reported. As the war went on, the science of aeroplane photography progressed enormously. It is hardly too much to say that the Germans could not deepen a trench without our knowing it almost at once. We never made a raid—or, at least, need never have made one—without all who were going over, even down to the private soldier, having the opportunity of studying photographs of the trenches where their work lay.
The Germans, of course, did the same, but in a limited degree, as their aeroplanes did not dare to come over our lines in the way that ours crossed theirs.
Once, when the Germans were contemplating a raid, their Flying Corps succeeded in taking photographs of that portion of our trenches which was to be attacked. With the help of these photographs, the German Command caused to be built an exact replica of the trenches which they intended to raid. They did this at no great distance behind their lines, with a view to rehearsing the raid just as a play is rehearsed in a theatre. We, of course, often did the same.
But to continue. One of our aeroplanes happened to pass over just as the Germans were having a daylight rehearsal, and, noticing the concentration of troops and the new workings of earth, a photograph was taken. This photograph was, of course, sent in the ordinary routine to Army Headquarters.