ECHOES OF THE WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 68, 20 March 1915, Page 6

ECHOES OF THE WAR.

SOLDIERS' LETTERS. - KING ALBERT DIGS A TRENCH. WHY HE IS LOVED BT HIS TROOPS. EXCHANGE FOR AN IRON CROSS. A Belgian soldier writes:—We are, of course, used now to the terrible war concert—cannon fire, the whistling of bullets, the noise of exploding bombs—but, to be fair, the steel noise, the bayonet fighting, is what we think the most dreadful and liked least. We spend most of tbe time in the trenches, but they are quite different from those which we had at Aerschot and round Antwerp. We live in "rooms" under the ground. I descend into my "room" by a ladder, and have a table (a packing case), a chair, a little stove, and a mattress. In tbe daytime I put the mattress against the wall to save room. Every day gives us a new hope and strengthj but every inch is taken by the sacrifice of precious lives. We never knew we loved our country so much, but our country means our fathers, mothers, our freedom, our everything. We never knew how much we loved our King; but with what he has done, and.is still doing for us, we could not help loving him. One Sunday, while inspecting with some staff officers, he saw some men digging trenches and looking very tired. He inquired how long they had been working, and on being told sent them away for a rest while he proposed to his officers that they and himself should take the men's places. The King of the Belgians could then be seen digging trenches to relieve his soldiers! Can one help loving and feeling proud to serve under such a King? IRON CROSS EXCHANGED FOR CLASP KNIFE. Second-Lieutenant W. Spencer, of the Wilts Regiment, writes: Nearly every German we saw wore an Iron Cross. One fellow exchanged his for a clasp-knife, which one of our Tommies let him have. The Iron Cross must be pretty abundant. We liave gone into the trenches again for the New Year. A SANDBAG COMEDY. A lientenant in the R.E.A. writes: The most comfortable spot is my dug-out by the guns. I have a fireplace and a coal fire burning brightly all the time. I have a bed of straw, with my Wolseley on top of it and—an armchair!—the first I have seen here. A rather funny thing happened in the trenches the other night. There was atrench partly held by the Germans and partly by the British, with a sandbag barricade between. In the night it blew and rained terribly hard, and the barricade came down. On one side was a British soldier and on the other a German. Instead of trying to shoot each other's head off they quietly began to pile the sacks in position again. First tbe Tommy put up a sack, then the German, until all was finished; then they said "Goodnight" and went back to their jobs. * I think it was priceless. - ■ ■ ' " '• '•"' The Germans are a pretty bad lot in spots. Several were captured the other day who had removed the bullets from their cartridges and had turned them round the reverse way, making them to all intents and purposes dumdum bullets. Another was caught armed with some sort of elephant gun. INEFFECTIVE .ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS. The anti-aircraft guns invented for this war have not proved very successful so far to any of the armies using them. Their comparative failure has caused them to be dubbed "Archibalds" by British soldiers, from a popular London catch phrase, which is supposed to be uttered by the airmen on scouting duty when he sees—or hears—the antiaircraft guns trying to bring his machine down—"Archibald," Certainly not." So far "Archibald" has failed on both sides to bring down an enemy machine, for, though in a few cases machines 'have been hit by splintere or bullets from his shells, the pilots have always managed, to get back, into their own lines. Latterly, the British have been trying as anti-aircraft guns some of the old "pompoms" which were used in. the South. African war, but with little success. The reasons for the failure of the aircraft guns are thus summed up by a frying man at the front:—"There is only one way of stopping .aeroplane raids," he said, "and' that- way is the possession of faster aeroplanes than the enemy—email, light scouting planes, capable of rising with, great rapidity. We have been witnessing at Dunkirk the noisy and costly farce which attend the appearance of an enemy plane anywhere. From ships, from forts, from masked naval and military riflemen, ten German Taubes and Aviatika. were fired upon for nearly en hour. Shrapnel poured up continuously into the sunshine and burst, rocket-like, all about the German airmen, who took not the least notice. They proceeded to drop their bombs, and then contemptuously returned across the very line of fire which had greeted their arrival. Trying to bring down an aeroplane with any existing aircraft gun is about as useful ac .shooting at a hundred yards up mosquito with a pea shooter." AUSTRIA'S APPEAL TO THE COTOTRY. Austrian political methods would not. be tolerated in Australia. Hungary ie faced with a general election, and as -the war ie notoriously unpopular in the Maygar half of the dual monarchy, the people of Hungary cherished the hope of defeating the Government at the elections, and thus proclaiming to the world that Hungary did not uphold the war party. But Count Tisza, the Hungarian Premier, is far too astute a politician to permit this simple scheme to succeed, and he has taken some remarkable preventive measures. He intends that only 100,000 burghers W;ho are among the votere now on the liet .out of a population of 20,000,000 shall poll. By refusing to allow the remainder of the voters who are not ■ on active service to vote, be confidently hopes to return the Government and the War party to powter. 'Df any of the independent voters endeavour to exercise their rights at the ballot box they will be prevented by armed soldiers! The fact that the country is under military law will render it comparatively easy to exercise this "precautionary" measure, so everything points to a Government, triumph at the polk. The people of Hungary want tbe postponed until after the war, but Count Tisza has gravely -declared that "in the interests- of thar-countrv; the-clectMee;

WEAR TBE ABODE OF ADAM AN D EVE. . A lance-corporal with the British forces, fighting the Turks near the Persian Gulf, writes:-Wβ are very near Adam and Eve's abode—the Garden of Eden. We captured two forts and a telegraph station the other day (in November) without losing a man. The enemy lost about forty. I am in good health, but this is a rotten country, and it is beastly hot. The greatest hardship of all is the scarcity of water. 1 have a lovely beard, and I have not had a wash for seventeen days; but we are all in good spirits. We had a decent affair with the enemy on November 14 and 15. We carried out a fine bayonet charge, and were praised by the General. We live on bread, tea, and dates. We had another hot fight on November 16. I got hit in the jaw, and have.lost my nice set of teeth. 1 am now on a hospital ship. WOUNDED DEB, FROM EXPOSURE. The most tragic aspect of trench warfare ie the sufferings endured by those wounded who are left lying between the trenches and exposed for successive daye and nighta to the cold and wet. until their sufferings are ended by death. A non commissioned officer of the Black Watch, in referring to this matter, says:—"We can't bring in our wounded or theirs. There they lie and cry in the cold for days till they 'go out,' either from starvation or exposure. Sometimes at night, and even through the day, men go out to bring in someone, but they're sniped at all the time, and it's 100 to 1 they're hit before they get back. On Christmas Eve three of our men went out to bring in a Cameron and a Coldstreamer. That was on a Thursday. They had been lying there, only 400 yards in front,- einee the Monday. Well, the wounded were not brought in, and only one of the three returned. There's no mistake this war is hideous. A young officer who "had his first experience of the trenches last Monday had to sit at one place for four days with a dead German beside him. A poor wounded Sikh crawled within 60 yards of our trench on Christmas Eve about 5.30 p.m. It was dark, of course, and our men mistook him for a sniper. He got. no further—simply riddled with bullets. We are not able to get out to them, and if they try to get in' on either side they're' 'goners.' A man in my regiment was killed by* a German sniper while going out to give a wounded German a drink of water.'* BLOWN UP BY A MIKE. The sapper is playing an important partt in the trench warfare, as in many places, where the trenches are close together, the best means of surprising the enemy is by sapping towards his trenches and blowing them up with a charge of explosive. The destruction o.f a trenchby this means is generally a prelude t» an attack. A French officer, Captain Maurice Jean, the commander of a company whose trench was blown up by the Germans at Alger Farm, about five miles south-east of Rheims, gives a graphic de-' scription of the incident. "It happened i about 4.30 a.m., before the moon had set," he writes. ."Suddenly theTe was violent fusillade from the German lines, to -which our men replied. I hurried out, surprised at fusillade on a clear, ,cold night. Helped by the non-commis-sioned officers, I ran down ceeded.in stopping thefusHlade, and returned to shelter to report to the bat-' talion commanders. I had hardly -begun to write wixMi I got the impression of an earthquake. I was thrown violently • forward, and covered with mud. My candle went out. Half stifled, I scrambled out of the hut, of which the entrance was almost completely closed. It was completely dark outside. lat once realised that the Germans had succeeded in blowing up my trenches by a mine. I imagined all my men buried. I quickly recovered and hurried forward. Forty of my men were engulfed, but to right and left, where the explosion stopped, none had stirred, despite the avalanche that had buried their comrades. My adjutant, who in the circumstances behaved admirably, had kept the men in hand. "At the moment a hail of slhells .fell on us. Then the cannonade stopped, and about -two hundred Germane got up, thinking that no one could be living after so terrible an explosion. Welcomed, however, !by the fire of the adjutant's section, the enemy beat a shameful retreat, leaving on Oie ground dead and wounded, of whom three were killed with the bayonet At dawn.we proceeded to get out some wounded, threequarters buried, and In daylight, with ■the help of engineers, we began again to organise the defence on the line of the exploded trenches. Having lost about 80 men, 40 killed and 40 wounded, I was relieved at midday by another company. - ; . The explosion -was horrible, and after it there was lett an open crater about 40 years across and 15 deep. It was estimated that nearly two tone of powder were used." A BRAVE RESCUE. A territorial officer writes as follows: "I -was sent up to hold some trenches in the vicinity of a once pretty village, now blown to pieces. These trenches have been lost and retaken about three times, and the fighting has been so hot that there are hundreds of dead within a square ■ mile —French, ' German, and British. I received a notification that two men in my front were supposed to be alive/and if an opportunity occurred would I get them in? They had been there for three days, and might be dead. There was a bright moon, and the stars were also bright, and there only remained about one hour, between three and sfouT &.m., when it woaM be possible to make the attempt. Unfortunately those beastly star rockets kept going up and lit up the whole place, and the proximity of the German trenches (200 yards) made it impossible to escape detection. So on the morning of Christmas Day we had not got them in. At 9.20 two of my (fellows made a dash for them in broad) dayKgM, pertly relying upon the sporting instincts of the foe and partly upon Christmas Day imparting a feeling of goodwill. They got there without a shot being fired, and part of the way back also before shots came buzzing, but they succeeded in dragging one wretched fellow over the •frozen ground by hie coat collar, and dived into oar-trench "without being bit.' He had been lying wounded for three or four days, and. was badly hit. He told Ime that the other mun had died the previous morning. I g»ve him my water •bottle, and he dearly swallowed cork and bottle too. Then I gave him some bread and jam, and by Jove, te was hungry 1 I mentioned something about i Christmas dinner, and when ie suddenly learnt it- -was daatmm -Day the poor chsp-v-went? Jitar Bowcer, we preaentea- him to*4Ji»:iegnnent > ..«md Te ~ cefred its grateM acknowledgment aid fthantos. He may 4os» ije