"Over There" with the AustraliansKnyvett, R. Hugh (Reginald Hugh)
History
"Over There" with the Australians
Knyvett, R. Hugh (Reginald Hugh)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English
It should always be remembered that a man who in war-time talks
sedition and disloyalty in public is not a spy. He is too big a fool
to be ever employed in a service that requires, above all things,
secrecy and the ability to avert suspicion. The first thing a spy
seeks to do is to find a suitable cloak to cover his designs, and also
to place himself in a position where he will gain information. Among
the first things he would do would be to seek to join the Red Cross,
and he would be almost certain to enlist. In these days the man to be
suspicious of is the one who is always protesting his loyalty and
showing what _he_ is doing "to help the cause." The true patriot knows
that he has no need to proclaim his loyalty, and is shy of boasting of
service that is really a "privilege and a duty."
Among the most useful equipments for a secret-service agent is
lip-reading, and if he can signal with his eyelids in Morse so much the
better. Dark goggles, one glass of which is a small mirror, are also
very useful, as one can sit with one's back to a party in a cafe or
train, and read what they are saying. Women are the most dangerous
spies, and trade on the instinctive chivalry that men cannot help but
extend to them. There are many officers whose deaths at the front have
been suicides because they were betrayed by some woman who had sucked
valuable information from them, and their chivalry would not let them
deliver her over to justice. Men in high place in England and in
France have betrayed the public trust through faith in a woman who was
false and who sold their confidence to the enemy for a price that was
so strong to their hearts as to be irresistible, more than love, honor,
or country.
Even in the army there are mysterious happenings--shots from behind and
strange disappearances. There was one Australian general whose death
created many rumors, and other officers who were supposed to have been
shot from within our lines.
Of course, in the war zone among a strange peasantry there are many spy
scares, and maybe some of the things we were suspicious of were quite
innocent; but it was strange that whenever a gray horse appeared near a
battery that battery was shelled, and when they painted all the gray
horses green their positions were not so frequently spotted. Sometimes
the old Flemish farmers would certainly plough their fields in a
strange fashion but, perhaps, zigzags and swastikas are common patterns
in French fields. It may have been our alarmed ears that fancied the
paper boy played a different tune on his horn every day, but pigeons
did certainly rise from the middle of paddocks contrary to the habits
of these birds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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