NIGHT PATROLS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21555, 18 January 1940, Page 3

NIGHT PATROLS

HOW THEY WORK A tough, lean, red-haired British corporal, who was decorated on the Indian North-Western Frontier recently, is one of the patrol commanders at present engaged at night in stealing through no-man’s land and the woods in front of the British sector on the Maginot Line, writes a correspondent. Clad in leather jerkins, carrying rifles with bayonets fixed, and with pockets full of Mills bombs, the patrol crawls out at dusk, perhaps intent on the capture of a prisoner for questioning; perhaps to “lie doggo” and watch enemy activities; perhaps to hunt and comb enemy patrols, to destroy a particular outpost or tp. cut wire entanglements in preparation for a larger offensive. The Germans, incidentally, are similarly engaged. “I had four men out to catch a prisoner last night,” the corporal said, “but I had been ordered to engage any patrol with which we made contact—this is generally done by bombs first, then we go in with the bayonet. We were 1000 yards from an outpost when the front lines opened a machine-gun duel. We at first hugged the ground, then moved from the line of fire, when we discovered a patrol of 30 Germans facing us. We both opened fire, then we ‘leap-frogged’ for home—one man always firing to cover the others retreating—with the Germans following. I got a sky-lined German and saw him fall, and Jones got another, and we i all got back. A Cough—Then a Bomb “Another pitch-dark night we ran into a large patrol, but we dropped to the ground unnoticed. Unfortunately one of us coughed and instantly a German bomb landed in the centre of our party and wounded one man. Several more bombs flashed ail round, but none hit us. Then a . .machine-gun opened fire, and another German patrol came up. We withstood the attack by rifle until two men using an overcoat as a stretcher, carried off their wounded comrade. We then hid in the wood while the Germans beat around. “Just before daylight, which is the usual time for patrols to return, we all arrived at the outpost safely from different directions. “The darkness of the woods is Stygian and the cold perishing. After lying still listening for a patrol the men are so frozen they cannot arise unassisted. But frost and snow are preferable to mud. Movement through a foot of mud is noisy, and silence is essential in patrolling the woods, where a whisper carries 10 yards.”