same General issued orders that no men were to
wear caps. He said he didn't care where we got hats from, but that we
were all old enough soldiers to obtain one somehow. He would punish
any soldier who appeared on parade next day without a hat, and the only
one whose head was minus a hat next morning was the brigadier himself!
He laughed and said that the man who pinched his hat had better not get
caught, that's all!

My chief business as intelligence officer was to keep an eye on Fritz
and find out what he was up to. I had a squad of trained observers who
were posted in certain vantage-points called O. Pips (O.
P.--Observation Post). These O. Pips were mostly on top of tall trees
or the top of some old ruined farmhouse. From these "pozzies"
(positions) a good deal of the country behind the enemy lines could be
seen, and the observers, who were given frequent reliefs so that they
would not become stale, had their eyes glued to it through a telescope.
Every single thing that happened was written down, including the
velocity and direction of the wind; the information from all these and
other sources being summarized by myself into a daily report for G. H.
Q.

There was one O. Pip on top of a crazy ruin that was used for many
months without the Germans suspecting. It really hardly looked as if
it would support the weight of a sparrow. I used to wonder oftentimes
how I was going to get up there, and then by force of habit would find
myself lying alongside the observer sheltering behind two or three
bricks. From this pozzie one of my boys saw a German Staff car pass
Crucifix Corner. This was a stretch of a hundred yards of road which
we could plainly see where a crucifix was standing, though the church
that once covered it had been entirely destroyed. The car was judged
to contain some officers of very high rank, both from the style of the
car and the colors of the uniforms. When I got this information I
prepared to make that road unhealthy in case they should return. I
called up our sniping battery, and got them to range a shell to be sure
they would not miss. At five o'clock in the afternoon my waiting was
rewarded, and just by the pressing of a button eight shells landed on
that car, and sent its occupants "down to the fatherland." We received
news about that time that one of the Kaiser's sons was killed, and
though it was denied later, in my dreams I often fancy that he might
have been in that car.

The