HORRORS OF SHELL FIRE.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15219, 5 March 1915, Page 8

HORRORS OF SHELL FIRE.

FRENCH COLONEL'S VIVID

NARRATIVE,

A French Colonel gives the following vivid description of artillery fire in the war:—"We had just done some good work,, and- demolished with our battery several of the enemy's guns opposite, blowing up their ammunition carts in a- fireworks display. Captain

It's, gaiety was suddenly cut short by an unexpected reply of telling precision. A shower of shells flying over my head had fallen right at his feet: a huge fragment had struck him to the heart. He cried: 'Ah! mon Dieu !' The' adjutant said: 'I am done for.' One of the gunners breathed out his soul in a long sigh, which I can 6till hear in my ears. All this in much less than a second and in a blinding flash of

light. I turned round, convinced that it was our -own shells that had burst inside the guns. The three men kvy side by side with their hands by their hips as if on parade, but they were stretched full length on their backs with an air of calm and rest on their faces, in which the eyes were still shining, that I shall always see in memory. Other men leaning against the wheels or fallen on their knees held their hand pressed upon the scarlet patches, which an instant before had been their faces, with difficulty holding eyes, nose or teeth in sobs of awful suffering. BATTLE'S ACTUALITY. "Pictures like this are terrible; ami grandiose, like all the holocausts freely offered to the idea of one's country, , which only take visible shape at such instants of tragic beauty. As for mo, I had not a scratch; my turn was to come only a little later. The first battalion of my battery went on past the dismantled one and flung themselves into a charge under a veritable overhead vault of shrapnel and shell which the enemy's batteries in front and on the flank built for them. I had no-time to think on the little incident which haj just saddened this corner of the battlefield and fetched two tears from my eyes. In battle the 'immediate , is what is happening and no longer that which has just happened. but still to-day—a long I month afterwards—every line of the picture of R.s battery at" the moment it I was hit stands faithfully in its place before my remembering glance Again I hear a voice (my own) 'Well.* captain? I was watching through my glasses avspot that I was ordering him to bombard and surprised at not having yet heard his guns behind mc, and another voice (his) a few second;? afterwards. <Ah! mon Dieu!' He was no longer ahve. Between the two exclamations death had passed, instantaneous and blessed, since he had not felt it, but quickly as his soul had been taken from him the last great cry of the poor stricken captain shows that he still had the time to give it up to the Master of All Things. This little scene on one tiny point of the immense field lasted as long as a flash only, but other like flashes had preceded and were to fnllnw Imagine it repeated a hun-

dred times over without much variation along the whole zone where the-armies arc grapphng and you will have an approximate vision of the picture of the battle painted by modern warfare. INVISIBLE SOLDIERS, "Do not imagine that; the eye sees motley masses of soldiers advancing in serried ranks against each other until the bayonets cross, according'to the traditional idea—of civilians. Your imagination would be completely in the wrong. It requires a very practised ove to see the men during a fight. When finally you have seen a few suddenly starting up like jack-in-the-box it is never more than for a few seconds, and the vision «h'ps into the ground again as suddenly as it appeared. But if at this moment, instead of keening flip eyo_ fixed on_ the noini where the vision vanished, waiting for it to renopear, yon turn it to the I richt or the left, ••lo?' will see the samp apparition being -•v-rlucod in the snmo instantaneous conditions. ' You would almost think th.it the ground h:id been sown beforehand with 'eolioso' appar- ! :»tns. representing a file of human silI houettes at intervals, able «lowly to ,nd- j i vance either above or underneath the ; i ground. i "After a long moment of this observation, and when the eye. jrrowing accustomed, begins to nerceivp details, it remarks here and there on all sides, i more or less, little light or dnrk boons : in rolie-f to the cttcii of +he plain, or thf? j -rellow of the fields. Those remain always visible , , ard, what is more, mo- \ tionless and in the same position. They ; are the broken silhouettes; they are the dead, that is all."