One by one the surviving men of the Strafbattalion slipped back into the German trenches after their night-time patrol. They had timed their arrival perfectly, returning just as the sky above began to lighten with the coming dawn, making their movement hard to spot from the Allied lines.
All the goods the troopers had brought back with them went into backpacks, while the papers and letters were dumped into a satchel and sent to the forward post office of the Abteilung IIIb.
Though the German office of Military Intelligence had achieved little success in its overseas operations, their work along the trenches of France and Belgium had so far been exemplary. Working with well-trained units, they had managed to create an effective web of information gathering cells along the western and east
