H. Hesketh-Prichard

“ In trench warfare, No Man's Land was the cockpit of the war. Some sections of it were more favourable than others for action, but every evening and every night a great number of British used to go out in front. When one first went out, it seemed almost certain that one must be killed. There was a spasmodic sputter of fire from machine-guns, but as an actual matter of fact, moving about in No Man's Land was much safer than it seemed. ”

“ In moments of excitement many men become somewhat prolix, and it is of the utmost importance that they should be taught to get their message into the fewest and clearest possible words.
A question that arose as the war went on was the definition of the duties of a sniper and a scout. It was held in some quarters that a sniper and a scout were two quite different men, who had in view two entirely different objects. The sniper, those who held this view said, was a man whose first duty was offensive action against the enemy, whereas a scout's duty was not to fight, but to obtain information. ”

“ Crawling out into No Man's Land in daylight is a very different business, and if there is reasonable cover, it is to my mind more satisfactory to crawl out then, when your life depends on your own skill, than to crawl about in the dark over the bodies of men who have been dead for weeks, and when Chance of the blindest kind absolutely rules the game. ”

“ As long as war lasts it will be necessary to find out what is in the enemy's mind, and this is so important, that those who prove themselves capable of discovering and of giving warning of what is about to occur, should be objects of admiration and respect to all their comrades. ”

“ In open or semi-open warfare a scout may still be ordered to go by day or night, and find out if this or that village is occupied by the enemy, but once trench warfare sets in, and the battle fronts of the opposing armies stretch from the sea to Switzerland, the work of the scout undergoes great changes. His theatre of action is No Man's Land, which comprises all the area between the two armies which are drawn up one against the other. ”

“ The man who has spent twenty years on the hill, and who has counted the points on a thousand stags, who knows the difference between every track that he sees in a corrie, and who is never far from his telescope, is, when he goes to war, simply carrying into another sphere the normal activities of his life. ”

“ Think what a difference it makes to a Commanding Officer to have in his battalion a certain number of men, however few, whom he can send out to obtain information, and who are so accurate and so dependable that he can always act upon their reports. ”

“ And yet there should be no difficulty in training a number of scouts in every battalion, but the ideal scout, or rather the ideal scout section, in a regiment, should be looked up to. Their immense value should be realized, and due credit and honour given to them for their skill. The scouts of a battalion should be the pick of that battalion, and the fact that a man has attained the rank of scout should be signalized by his receiving extra pay and extra consideration. ”

“ Of course there is another point which struck one most strongly, and this was the examination of prisoners.
It may well be that a man cannot help being taken, whether through wounds or otherwise, but it is of the first importance that he should give away nothing to the enemy. For this reason, as scouts and anyone who has anything to do with any kind of Intelligence work are always put through a much more rigorous examination if they should be captured, we were very strongly against badges for scouts. ”

“ There is no such place opposite my Corps," he would say. "All the land right up to the edge of the enemy's parapet is our land, and we have got to have control of it."
I believe I am right in stating that about seven out of every ten raids undertaken on the First Army Front in 1916 were the work of the nth Corps, and they had long held the record in the number of prisoners taken in a single raid.
The work of the scout was, of course, to dominate the enemy in No Man's Land, and to this end he was continually patrolling it during the hours of darkness. ”

“ Meantime, the main raiding party had got to work, and soon enemy reinforcements came rushing along the trench towards the sergeant. Seeing the duck-board ahead of them, they mistook the position of the mud-hole, and in they crashed. Soon the hole was as full of men as is a newly-opened tin of sardines. Next the sergeant opened fire upon them. The whole raid was a glorious success. Prisoners were taken, and German dug-outs blown up—a result that could hardly have occurred had it not been that the sergeant had the sense and acumen to remove the duck-board ”

“ If he is captured, unless it unfortunately happens that he knows of some imminent move that is to be made, there is very little danger of his giving away anything, for the simple reason that he knows so little. ”

“ Little, as a rule, is done by daylight, though Gaythorne-Hardy, who was Intelligence Officer of the 4th Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, and whom I have referred to before, in order to investigate the German wire under Hill 63, near Messines, decided, after looking at the ground with a telescope, to crawl out by day. ”