One remarkable thing about the prisoners we did get was their exceedingly thorough knowledge of everything going on, not only of the war in general, but of all that was taking place back of our trenches. Their spy system is something marvelous. Why, they knew the exact date our reinforcements were coming on one occasion nearly a week beforehand, when the majority of our fellows hadn't even an idea there were any expected!
In some cases they got information from French villagers whom they had bought before they retreated. I saw one such case myself. We were bivouacked in a ruined village, and a lot of us were sleeping in and around a cottage that hadn't been damaged. We were downstairs, while the owner of the cottage and his wife and kid had the upstairs room. One of our boys happened to go outside in the night and, by jingo! he saw the fellow coolly signaling with a lamp behind his curtain. He went along and told the Captain, who was at the schoolhouse, and they came back with a couple of under officers and arrested them red-handed. He tried to hide under the bed, and howled for mercy when they pulled him out. His wife never turned a hair--the Sergeant told me she looked as if she was glad he'd been caught. They shot him there and then in his own yard, and his wife was around in the morning just as if nothing had happened.
After that we always used to be very suspicious of any house or village that wasn't devastated when everything round had been chewed up; there was nearly always a spy concealed somewhere not far off. To give you a case in point: There was a fine big château near Craonelle, where our trenches were, that hadn't been bombarded, though they had stripped most of the furniture and stuff out of it. Well, one fine day the General commanding our section thought it would be a convenient place to hold a big pow-wow. He and his staff had only been seated at the table about ten minutes when a whacking great 310-millimeter shell burst right on top of the darned place, followed by a perfect hail of others. The General and his staff ran for their lives; luckily none of them were badly hurt, though they got the deuce of a scare.
After the bombardment some of us went along to look at what was left of the château, and--will you believe me?--we found a little old Dutch sous-off half choked in the cellar, but still hanging on to the business end of a telephone. I call that the pluckiest thing I've seen at the war, and I can tell you we were mighty sorry to have to shoot him. He never turned a hair, either, and we didn't even suggest bandaging his eyes. He knew what was coming to him from the start; that he was as good as a dead man from the moment he got into the cellar. He told us he had been there a week, just waiting for some confiding bunch of French officers to come along and hold a meeting.