The Germans expended a large number of heavy shells in a long range bombardment of the village of Missy (Department of the Aisne).  Reconnoitring parties sent out during the night of Sept. 21-22 discovered some deserted trenches.  In them or in the woods over 100 dead and wounded were picked up.  A number of rifles, ammunition and equipment were also found.  There were other signs that portions of the enemy’s forces had withdrawn some distance.

The weather was also fine on Sept. 22 with less wind, and it was one of the most uneventful days we have passed since we reached the Aisne, that is, uneventful for the British.  There was less artillery work on either side, the Germans giving the village of Paissy (Aisne) a taste of the “Jack Johnsons.”  The spot thus honored is not far from the ridge where there has been some of the most severe close fighting in which we have taken part.  All over this No Man’s Land, between the lines, bodies of German infantrymen were still lying in heaps where they had fallen at different times.

Espionage plays so large a part in the conduct of the war by the Germans that it is difficult to avoid further reference to the subject.  They have evidently never forgotten the saying of Frederick the Great:  “When Marshall Soubise goes to war he is followed by a hundred cooks.  When I take the field I am preceded by a hundred spies.”  Indeed until about twenty years ago there was a paragraph in their field service regulations directing that the service of protection in the field, such as outposts and advance guards, should always be supplemented by a system of espionage.  Although such instructions are no longer made public the Germans, as is well known, still carry them into effect.

Apart from the more elaborate arrangements which were made in peace time for obtaining information by paid agents some of the methods which are being employed for the collection or conveyance of intelligence are as follows: 

Men in plain clothes signal the German lines from points in the hands of the enemy by means of colored lights at nights and puffs of smoke from chimneys in the day time.  Pseudo laborers working in the fields between the armies have been detected conveying information.  Persons in plain clothes have acted as advanced scouts to the German cavalry when advancing.

German officers or soldiers in plain clothes or French or British uniforms have remained in localities evacuated by the Germans in order to furnish them with intelligence.  One spy of this kind was found by our troops hidden in a church tower.  His presence was only discovered through the erratic movements of the hands of the church clock, which he was using to signal his friends by an improvised semaphore code.  Had this man not been seized it is probable he would have signalled the time of arrival and the exact position of the headquarters staff of the force and a high explosive shell would then have mysteriously dropped on the building.