HORRORS OF MINE WARFARE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 311, 31 December 1915, Page 6

HORRORS OF MINE WARFARE.

TRENCH PHILOSOPHY. " Truly human beings can become accustomed to anything, and so it is with our men in this war." This philosophic extract is taken from the letter of a Highland officer who gives a vivid pen-picture of the recent fighting at the I iront, where, despite the horrors of war- ! fare, the whirr of the threshing machine, he states, is constantly heard in the villages behind the lines. i " Every now and then," the officer ' writes, " one hears a tremendous crash, and then a cloud of white smoke and chalk combined rises in our trenches, caused by the explosion of a German trench mortar, bomb, or by an aerial : torpedo. Five or six of these came over I and behind vs —far behind —we hear a I comparatively low crack, and then comee : a rumbling sound resembling a railway train in the distance. This sound passes overhead, and we say ' Look out for the crash!' and soon we see a tremendous I black and white cloud rising in a ruined ' village or near it among the German 1 trenches. j " The sound of the explosion, like a ; sudden heavy peal of thunder, comes a few seconds later. We are charmed with the well-planted shot, and when another and yet another arrive, all landing near the same place, and the German trench mortare stop peppering our trenches, immediately after we realised to a slight degree the moral and real effects of high ; explosive shells of large calibre. "Early in the morning of September 14 the Germans exploded a mine underneath ours and wounded several of our men, while one officer lost his life through gas poisoning by going into our tunnel to try to save one of the wounded men. An explosion always leaves poisonous gas for at least twenty-four houre afterwards in the tunnels and mines,' and it is highly dangerous to venture into them until the gas haa had time to dissipate itself. Describing a visit to the front trenches where the Boches were only fifteen to twenty or thirty yards away, the writer pays:—"'There our boys were sitting or crouching in the trench or in the formed dugout scooped out of the chalk bank, taking things as calmly as if sitting on a peat bank in the North of Scotland, enjoying a smoke after dome half a day's peat cutting. "Not only is warfare"goin<» on nmr the surface of the ground, but°min e « on both B ,des are tunnelling away towards the opposing hnes, each party trying its utmost to be first in a positioned £ n<>atn the enemy's trench to lay a char-e