The French, German, Russian, Austrian, and Hungarian infantry are all
armed with long, heavy, and ill-balanced rifles carrying detachable
bayonets. These rifles are very poorly sighted in comparison with our
new Springfield. It would be very difficult or impossible to do good
shooting with them, as measured from an American standpoint. In my
personal experience there have been numberless cases where dispatch
bearers, automobiles, scouts, pickets, and patrols were exposed at
very short range to the fire of bodies of French or German troops
without any casualties whatsoever occurring.

The one idea of the German infantry seems to be to shoot as much and
as rapidly as possible. I have several times observed where German
infantry have taken up a position in the open, and fired 120 rounds a
man, more or less, as a matter of course.

I have nowhere observed the use of any semi-automatic rifles, nor of
either silencers or special sights for sharpshooters.

TRENCHES AND CONCEALMENT

In October I was in the neighborhood of Lassigny and Roye where heavy
fighting was and had been going on. There was a little village called
Erches to the northwest of these places. Here were the French advance
trenches. I was in this village during the height of operations and
was told that we were then only 150 or 200 yards from the German
trenches. Standing behind a house corner in this village of Erches, I
could see nothing unusual in any direction. I could see no signs of
French or German activity nor of life of any kind, although the French
infantry trenches extended to our right and left and the Germans were
directly in front of us. The landscape which spread away in all
directions looked perfectly normal and unbroken except for a few shell
craters. The only manifestations of activity were the distant rumbling
of guns, and the shrapnel bursting over our heads. Although I stayed
there for more than an hour, the only Frenchmen I saw were a few who
joined me behind the house; they came from trenches hidden within it,
or from an underground trench, the opening of which was behind the
house. I recount this to accent the concealment of all troops in this
war. Trenches are made to resemble the landscape in which they are
placed. If they are in a brown mowed field, hay is scattered over all
fresh earth, and if they are made in pasture land all the earth is
carefully carried away or is spread out and sodded over.

CAVALRY

The Austrian cava