Adventures of a Despatch Rider, page 69 by W. H. L. Watson
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ter a unit has moved and before the message announcing the move has "come through" to the Division.
When the Division is advancing or retiring this exploration-work is the only work. To find a given brigade, take the place at which it was last reported at the Signal Office and assume it was never there. Prefer the information you get from your fellow despatch riders. Then find out the road along which the brigade is said to be moving. If the brigade may be in action, take a road that will bring you to the rear of the brigade. If there are troops in front of the brigade, strike for the head of it. It is always quicker to ride from van to rear of a brigade than from rear to van.
The second kind of work consists in riding along a road already known. A clever despatch rider may reduce this to a fine art. He knows exactly at which corner he is likely to be sniped, and hurries accordingly. He remembers to a yard where the sentries are. If the road is under shell fire, he recalls where the shells usually fall, the interval between the shells and the times of shelling. For there is order in everything, and particularly in German gunnery. Lastly, he does not race along with nose on handle-bar. That is a trick practised only by despatch riders who are rarely under fire, who have come to a strange and alarming country from Corps or Army Headquarters. The experienced motor-cyclist sits up and takes notice the whole time. He is able at the end of his ride to give an account of all that he has seen on the way.
D.H.Q. were at Serches, a wee village in a hollow at the head of a valley. So steeply did the hill rise out of the hollow to the north that the village was certainly in dead ground. A fine road went to the west along the valley for three miles or so to the Soissons-Rheims road. For Venizel you crossed the main road and ran down a little hill through a thick wood, terribly dark of nights, to the village; you crossed the bridge and opened the throttle.
The first time I rode north from Venizel, M