A VICTORY FOR THE DEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 19, 22 January 1916, Page 11

A VICTORY FOR THE DEAD.

GERMANS HTTBMD BACK. A KBENCH INCIDENT. War conditions are favourable for the birth of stories of the supernatural, l&ousands of British people regard as true the supernatural story of the angels at Mons—the angels who saved the hardpressed British Expeditionary Force from capture by the Germans at the opening stage of the British operations in the western campaign. This story holds pride of place among the accounts of supernatural incidents that have been circulated in Great Britain. In France pride of place is occupied by a story of dead and dying French 6oldiera who Tose out of the trench in which their ■bodies had been lying, and hurled back the Germans who were trying to capture it. This story has recently been told in the "Echo de Paris" by M. Maurice Berres, a well known French writer. The hero of the stirring incident is Lieutenant Pericard, a man of 38 years, who has a real existence, for he has been Mentioned hi the French army orders, an honour equivalent to the British honour of being mentioned in dispatches. • The story that Lieutenant Pericard told to 1L Barres is as followB:— "My section, with three otnere from different companies, was ordered to attack a German trench. It was a stiff fight, and we tad many killed and wounded; all night through we kept up the action with bombs under a torrential downpour of rain, which drenched us to the skin, but we held the trench, and I experienced a. great exaltation of spirit. I felt that life was extraordinarily intensified, and I had a laugh on my lips. On two occasions a 'torpedo , knocked mc over, covering mc with earth and wreckage, and I picked myself up laughing as if at a good joke. "In the morning we were relieved, so that we miglit have a rest, and we went into a eecond line trench and tried to sleep. Towards midday we woke in a hurry. The Germans had just counterattacked wuh an avalanche of grenades and torpedoes. They were repulsing us. It was panic. Not only had they retaken their own trench, but they were reaching ours. "Already our men were pressing into the communication trenches, shouting, 'The Bodies! The Boches!' All the officers were wounded; only the narrowness of the communication trenches held back the fugitives, who were crowding one on the other. T had a moment's hesitation. After all, it was not my turn to attack, and, then, my men were very fatigued. Then I pulled myself together. I made my sacrifice, and decided to die to stop the Boches. "I brushed a passage for mysel through the scared crowd, and called out, 'No, my friends! The Boches are not there. They have gone back! They have taken to their heels!' and similar words, which, passing from mouth to mouth, stopped the retreat a bit. A few volunteers joined mc. I leaped for : ward, and my bomb-throwers scattered their missiles among the Boches, who fell back. I was the first man put ot

the French trench. I was as sure of my 1 eath as I was of the sunshine, but what ; erenity was mine! < "Still throwing bombs, we readied the enemy trench, and recaptured our por- ' tion. Before us, hi a communication : trench leading from the first to the 1 second German line, I had a sandbag barrier erected, and enjoyed breathing space. But on our left the Germans were still lighting in our own lines, and on our right the trench was empty—our own men gone, the Bodies not yet arrived. We were just a handful of men, completely isolated, With a rain of bombs on our heads coming from in front of us. If the Germans knew the smallness of our numbers! "Their artillery rages. A lieutenant who has come to support mc, and who is smoking a cigarette, laughing at the projectiles, is struck by a bullet above the temple. He leans against the parapet, both hands behind his hack, his -head slightly bowed. His head droops more and more, then his body bends, and, more sharply, falls. The grief of his men, who throw themaelvcs weeping on his body, is terrible. "Unable to move a step without treading on a corpse, I am suddenly conscious of the precariousness of my fate —my exaltation abandons mc; J am afraid, and throw myself behind a heap of sandbags. Only a soldier named Bonnot remains. He fights on like a lion, one against how many? I recover myself, shamed by his example, and a few comrades join us. "Some 30 yards off I notice an interruption in the trench in the form of an enormous splinter shield. Shall I go to see what is happening there? I hesitate, and then sharply decide. . The trench is full of French dead; there is blood everywhere. From our own trench behind men watch mc with eyes of fear. Sheltered in their retiring trenches, the Bodies are redoubling their efforts; their bombs are tumbling down, and the avalanche is rapidly approaching. "I turn towards the extended corpses. I think, 'Their sacrifice, then, is to be of no avail; they will have fallen in vain? And tile Bosches are going to come back. They will steal our dead from U3.' A second fury gripped mc. I have no recollection now of my exact actions or words. All 1 know is that I shouted eomething like this, 'Oh, there! Up with you! What are you doing on the ground there? Debout lee morts!' (Up with, you. dead men!) A touch of madness? No, for the dead answered mc. They said to mc, 'We follow you.' And, rising at ray call, their souls mingled with my soul "and made of it a great incandescent mass. "What happened then? There is a gap in my recollection; action swallowed up memory. I have simply a vague. Impression of a disorderly offensive inwhich, always in the front rank, Bonnot stands out." One of the men of my section, wounded in the arm, continued to hurl at the enemy bombs spotted with his blood. "Twice we ran short of bombs, and twice we found, at our feet, sacks full of them mingled with the sandbags. We had moved about over them all day without noticing them. But was it, indeed, the dead .that had put them there? "At iaet the Bosches calmed down; we were able to consolidate our barrier of

bags in the communication trench. We again found ourselves masters of this corner. '"All ■ the evening and during several of the succeeding days I retained the religious emotion which had ecized on mc at the moment of that summons to the dead. I felt something like that which one feels after a fervent Communion. "I know that there is nothing of the hero about mc. Every time that I have had to jump over the parapet I have shivered with fear, and the distress : which seized mc in the height of action is not an accident in my soldiering life. I deserve no compliment. It is the l.viiig who carried mc along by tlierr example and the dead who led mc by the hand. "The cry came not from the mouth of a man, but from the heart of all those who lay there, living and dead. One man alone could not find that accent. It wanted the collaboration of several souls, aroused by circumstances, and some of them already floating in eternity."