there and work for hours, within
a stone's throw of a vigilant and merciless enemy. Occasionally they
are discovered and have trouble, but in the great majority of cases
the work is done and every one gets back unhurt.

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.

Working his way through our wire, he crawled along the side of the old
disused road, there being a shallow ditch there which afforded a
little concealment. The flares were going up frequently and progress
was, of course, very slow. At one place the body of a soldier was
lying in the ditch and, in trying to roll it out of the way, he pulled
off one of the feet. By creeping along, inch by inch, he finally
reached the enemy's wire and spent about an hour working through it.
Then crawling along the outside of the parapet, stopping often to
listen, he soon found the loophole of the new gun emplacement. Taki