In the daytime, the shade on a window facing the German line would frequently be moved. Sometimes it would be drawn the full length of the window; then, if the German artillery had been pounding away at our right flank, immediately it would switch in the direction of our batteries. Sometimes the shade would be only half way down. More than once I saw a woman at this same window; and sometimes she would be leading a cow about some distance behind our lines. At night a light would be seen now and again moving past the window.
Agents of the British Intelligence Department, summoned to the front by our officers, discovered that a complete system of signalling was carried on between the people in the isolated farm house and the Germans. Three men and a woman were marched out of the house and taken away. After that, our concealed batteries, in new positions, hadn’t a single casualty for days, whereas, previously, they had been almost constantly under heavy and accurate fire!
During the few days following the “white flag” affair, when the boches’ shelling was not quite so steady, we passed our time playing cards. Occasionally one of the fellows, who had split a piece of wood at one end, would insert a card in it and hold it over the parapet. Nine times out of ten a German sniper—there were many of them in the vicinity—would put a hole in it with a bullet.
These snipers caused us a great deal of trouble, particularly when we wanted water, which was procurable only at a little brook on our left flank. To get it was such a risky proposition that there were no “detail parties” formed in the daytime, and any one who went in quest of it, did so at his own risk. Many a one who did so venture paid for his daring with his life. The snipers were always busy, even at night, and seemed to have a line on this spot.
A few of the fellows, rather than risk going to the brook, filled their water bottles from a duck pond—full of a dirty, green, slimy liquid—situated behind our line. The result was sickness to most of those that drank it and nearly all had to be sent to hospital.
Late one afternoon our section (thirteen men) was all together. Four of us were playing cards in an effort at distraction, for we were nearly insane from the lack of drinking water. For two days we had had to eat our bully beef and biscuits dry. We made it up that we should play a game of “phat” (a common card game among the Tommies), and that the one with the lowest count would have to take the section’s water bottles and fill them at the brook. This—to use a Yankee expression—was a “cinch” for me, or at least I thought so at the beginning of the game; and so did the others, who, because of my record as a winner at the game were of the opinion that I couldn’t lose.
However, toward the middle of the game I became nervous. So far I had taken only two tricks. Things got worse as the playing progressed, and it wound up with me the loser.
Without a word, they collected the thirteen bottles and hung them on my left shoulder like decorations on a Christmas tree.
Silently I made off. I reached the brook without mishap.
I had almost half of the bottles filled when—zip—a bullet struck very close to me. I tumbled into the water, pulling the bottles with me, and, in a lying position, continued filling them. This was not what one might call a comfortable or a convenient position in which to fill water bottles. They filled very slowly indeed.