World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Italian
Telephone lines with double wires are the only ones used now near the
front line trenches, and with these it is much simpler to intercept
messages. Furthermore, orders were issued that all important
communications be transferred in code language. An expert trained ear,
and an alert mind, however, can readily unravel the little disguises
and stock words used by the troops at the front. For example, it is not
very difficult to interpret the significance of the following message
overheard on the fifteenth of January by our station at Grave di
Poppadopoli:
“Hello—Hello Adler. Who is on the wire?”
“Weiss. Bad day to-day.”
“The katzelmacher has molested us a great deal this morning. It has
made a great noise with its rattle and we had three bananas and a few
wounded. I beg you to send us by foreign exchange many caramels because
those of the Kaiser Stellung are almost finished.”
This Kaiser Stellung was beginning to annoy us. For some time we had
heard her mentioned continually in the messages we intercepted and had
not been able to discover from the prisoners or others what the enemy
referred to by that name. Purposely to keep us ignorant of its designs,
the enemy troops opposite us had given special names to every important
locality and position, names which differed from those assigned to them
on the maps and charts. Finally, after numerous researches, we
succeeded in guessing the three different points, each of which had the
characteristics which we had noticed mentioned about the Kaiser
Stellung. At a fixed hour, our artillery opened fire on all three
points which we thought to be the Kaiser Stellung. Shortly after, one
of our intercepting stations picked up the message, “Time, 1.15 P. M.
The enemy has fired three shots of large caliber near the Kaiser
Stellung. No wounded.” The Kaiser Stellung had been discovered!
There are also special observers in the trenches who compile nightly
bulletins of every incident or sound which has been seen or heard in
the adversary’s trenches. For example the observatory of Case Bressanin
communicated on the night of January 13, that an unusual rumbling of
carts was heard near the first lines and that all night there were many
voices of persons apparently engaged in transporting material. The same
night, the noise of pick-axes in use in the trenches was distinctly
heard. The enemy was constructing bridgeheads in his trench lines.
Periscopes, cunningly hidden in the trees, can examine the level ground
of the zones nearby, but observations from them are not very fruitful
because the enemy usually refrains from any movement during the daytime.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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