How is it done? Simply a matter of training and careful preparation.
Every man is rehearsed in his work until he can do it perfectly,
quickly and without noise. Materials are carefully checked up and
distributed and, each man having a certain specified task and no
other, there is no confusion or blundering. They all know that, when a
flare goes up near by, they must "freeze" in whatever position they
may be. Movements of any kind would be sure to discover them to the
enemy lookout, but lacking that movement it is a hundred-to-one shot
they will be undetected.
There have been a good many instances where a flag has been planted by
the enemy, on his parapets or inside his wire, with a challenge to any
one to come over and get it. There was one such opposite our position.
Many stories had been told about that flag: The Brandenburgers had it
first, then the French got it and passed it along to the English, who
relieved them; then the Prussians took it away from the British and
had held it ever since; for about a year, in fact. We could see it,
plainly enough; a dark blue affair with some sort of a device in
yellow in the center. I often noticed it from our position back at
Sniper's Barn and had some rather hazy ideas about going over after
it.
One dark rainy night in November, a man in the section named Lucky
announced that he was going over to Fritz's line to try to locate a
new machine-gun emplacement which we had reason to believe had been
recently constructed. He slipped over the parapet where a road ran
through our lines and those of the enemy. It was only about seventy
yards across at this point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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