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TRENCH LIFE 329
to eight metres, cylindrical in form and capped by a flat cone.
In the interior of such stacks the Germans have often dis-
covered telephone operators. When I drove past one of these
stacks for the first time I saw that it had been pulled to pieces,
with the straw scattered in the greatest confusion. I asked
my companion for the reason of this " eccentric treatment
"
and was told in reply : "It was thought that a man with a
telephone apparatus might have concealed himself inside and
they wanted to make quite sure." I have since often seen
similar stacks in the fields and wondered what it must feel
like to sit shut up in one month after month. I had a shrewd
suspicion that he must get his information from the civil in-
habitants of the neighbourhood. Spies in the guise of vagrant
peasants or shepherds no doubt steal up to the stack in the
dead of night and creep in through some hidden passage to
tell the operator what they have seen.
The following episode was told me by a German officer.
The Germans had billeted themselves on a French village and
had requisitioned against bons what they needed for their
reasonable wants. Thereupon an elderly cure turned up at
the commandant’s office and pleaded in the most beseeching
tones to be allowed to keep the modest little stock of wine
in his cellar which he said he needed for the sake of his failing
health. His request was readily granted and orders were
issued that the priest and his wine-cellar should be excluded
from all requisitions. After a time the Germans noticed with
amazement that the French fire in these parts was directed
with almost uncanny precision. A thorough search was in-
stituted, houses, cellars and straw stacks were ransacked, but
without success. Nobody thought of the cure, who was old
and broken in health, and who with the most innocent air in
the world was seen daily tottering along laboriously to and
from his little church. But at last things grew so suspicious
that even the cure’s house had to be searched. There in the
wine-cellar stood a large cask and inside it was a telephone
apparatus, the wires from which passed through the cellar
floor into the earth. It was the old cure himself who at night
gave all the information which had proved so fatal to the
Germans in the neighbourhood. On the following night the
telephone was once more in operation. This time, however,
it was a German officer, speaking French without the slightest
trace of an accent, who took his seat in the wine cask. And
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