Entrenched German soldiers behind sniper plates at Slota Gora, September 26, 1916. Slota (or Zlota) Gora was in Polish Russia, west of a line running from Warsaw to Cracow. An original watercolor (over pencil) by O. Oettel, 12th company of Landwehr, IR 32 in the field. A sketch in pencil and red crayon is on the reverse.
Slota Gora26.9.16O.Oettel 12L.32.I. FeldeZlota GoraSeptember 26, 1916O. Oettel, 12th Landwehr 32nd RegimentIn the Field
"January 25th.—Dolling, always watchful of the doings of enemy working-parties, had reported some new stakes. Expecting that wirers would be at work on them he and five bravoes stole across after dark. A party was seen and bombed—very successfully, judging by the cries of woe. Our guns co-operated, all but knocking our fellows' heads off. Stanway was giving occasional but deadly aid to the snipers. Once he snapped an officer where the German parapet was low. Another day he got a pheasant for the pot. He had a disconcerting habit at one time of keeping his revolver on the table when playing cards, to shoot rats as they ran along the cornice beam of the dug-out."
Excerpt from the entry for January 25, 1916 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers. Soldier Dolling had seen the stakes that would support newly-placed barbed wire, and rightly reasoned German soldiers would string new wire at night.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 178, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
1916-01-25, 1916, January, sniper, rat, rats, night patrol, wire, barbed wire
