"Over There" with the Australians

by R. Hugh Knyvett

[1] Robt. W. Service.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE ARMY'S PAIR OF EYES

The aeroplane has become so much a necessity to the army that it is difficult to imagine how wars were ever fought without them. I remember reading a statement by a military observer with the Japanese army that, if the Russians had had a single aeroplane, they could have annihilated the Japs more than once. Of the army's pair of eyes the airman is the sharper, but the old-time scout is not by any means superseded, though his methods have changed. Just as there is much behind the enemy lines that only the aeroplanes can see, there are some things that cannot be discovered except from the level of the ground along which the scout crawls. The airman makes the enemy's plans an open book, for he observes him as soon as he moves, but the airman travels on a different plane from the infantry soldier, and it is the infantry man who fights out the final phase of the battle. The ground has an altogether different aspect from the air, and aeroplane photographs sometimes mislead. The scout, however, goes ahead on the same ground that the infantry have to travel, and he can bring back news of exactly what is there. The airmen do not help us much in determining the condition of the enemy's barbed wire, and nothing is so fatal for an attack as being held up on the wire. "Streamer" wire cannot be seen a few yards away, and only by sending out advance scouting-parties can a commander know whether the wire has been sufficiently destroyed to allow an easy passage for his troops. As an attack is always planned to take two or three of the enemy's lines, these scouts have to find out the condition of the wire in front of the second or third line trenches as well.

Crawling in No Man's Land and behind the German lines is not as dangerous as it sounds. The greatest cause of casualties is shell-fire and the scout is safe from this, for, naturally, no enemy shells fall near him in enemy territory, and he has previously arranged with his own artillery to withhold fire from the sector in which he is working. He runs little risk even from machine-guns or rifles, for the ground is so honeycombed with shell-holes that he is nearly all the time in good cover. The only danger that he runs is that of discovery, and for a properly trained scout such is inexcusable.

The general idea the stay-at-home has of the trenches is that every yard contains a man who is watching out for signs of the enemy. But a trench is serrated with bays containing half a dozen men who are cut off from sight of their neighbors. Of these half-dozen men one or, at most, two are on the lookout while the others are sleeping, and a well-placed hand-grenade will put the whole six of them out of action. Experience has shown that where there has been much shell-fire the sentry's observation is very lax, as men will not stick their heads above the trenches any more than they can help and at night periscopes are not much use. I have repeatedly come back into our own trenches from a night's excursion without being seen by our own sentries, and on two occasions, in the daytime. There are some sectors that are only held by battle outposts with gaps of fifty and a hundred yards without them. Of course, it is an easy matter to get past in these places.

We have sometimes to get the artillery to make a way for us. We will have them bombard a hundred yards of German trench very heavily for about ten minutes while we lie within fifty yards waiting for the prearranged second when we will scuttle across; the enemy having been compelled to vacate that sector during the bombardment, it is some minutes before they realize that the shelling has ceased and return.

Once behind the German front trench, the work is easy, for they never look behind or imagine that any of their enemies could be in their rear, and there is no observation from the second or third line trenches. On other occasions we do without the help of the artillery, bombing a gap for ourselves. We arrange to have rifle-grenades fired along three hundred yards of trench except for fifty yards where is our gateway. Here we sneak up and carefully roll hand-grenades into two or three bays. The Germans on either side do not take any notice of these explosions as the same thing is happening all along the line, and the Germans in the bays are not in condition to take much notice either. We may have to administer the "coup-de-grace" with our hand-bayonets.

Getting back is fairly easy, for the sentry's back is toward us, and a scout should never have to strike twice. He may leave a Mills grenade with the pin out as a gift to the sleeping men in the bay. He only has a two or four-foot-wide trench to cross, and even if the alarm be given he is back among the million and two shell-holes of No Man's Land before any action can be taken: even though they bomb their front thoroughly the chances are in the scout's favor; though they make No Man's Land bright as day with star-shells and flares there are plenty of shell-holes deep enough to completely hide him from view.