The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume 2 (of 2) : $b The Second Battalion and AppendicesKipling, Rudyard
History
The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume 2 (of 2) : $b The Second Battalion and Appendices
Kipling, Rudyard
Great Britain. Army. Irish Guards -- History; World War, 1914-1918 -- Regimental histories -- Great Britain
While in Brigade Reserve for a couple of days No. 1 Company amused
itself preparing a grim bait to entice German patrols into No Man’s
Land. Two dummies were fabricated to represent dead English soldiers.
“One, designed to lie on its back, had a face modelled by Captain
Alexander from putty and paint which for ghastliness rivalled
anything in Madame Tussaud’s. The frame-work of the bodies was wire,
so they could be twisted into positions entirely natural.” While they
were being made, on the road outside Brigade Headquarters at Pont du
Hem, a French girl came by and believing them to be genuine, fled
shrieking down the street. They were taken up to the front line on
stretchers, and it chanced that in one trench they had to give place
to let a third stretcher pass. On it was a dead man, whom no art
could touch.
Next night, February 15, between moonset and dawn, the grisliest
hour of the twenty-four, Lieutenant Pym took the twins out into No
Man’s Land, arranging them one on its face and the other on its
back in such attitudes as are naturally assumed by the old warped
dead. “Strapped between the shoulders of the former, for the greater
production of German curiosity, was a cylinder sprouting india-rubber
tubes. This was intended to resemble a flammenwerfer.” Hand- and
rifle-grenades were then hurled near the spot to encourage the theory
(the Hun works best on a theory) that two British patrols had fought
one another in error, and left the two corpses. At evening, the
Lewis-gun party and a brace of bombers lay out beside the kill, but
it was so wet and cold that they had to be called in, and no one was
caught. And all this fancy-work, be it remembered, was carried out
joyously and interestedly, as one might arrange for the conduct of
private theatricals or the clearance of rat-infested barns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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