TRENCH STORIES

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2882, 21 September 1916, Page 8

TRENCH STORIES

WHAT A 9.2 "HATE" IS LIKE BATTERY UNDERSTANDINGS (iunncr Louis England, of Karon, writes to his parents with all the cheer of a good soldier :— "I'm a great bis, overfed, underworked gunner, who is doing all right, and I'm at peace with all tho world except the blighters in'tho noxt paddock. The Colonel asked mo to take Kitchener's place the other day, hut it was too warn) and pleasant to contemplate aay such dreadful alternative . . . After a lazy time lam now in a battery whore I can give as aood as I receivo. I got tired of dodging shells and not returning the compliment, hut now I hope to get a- hit of my own hack: Excuse the rotten writing as I am writing this in an undoraround dug-out, into which very little light filters, but the place is as safe as a house. It is only four feet iri , height, so it is impossible to stand up to do one's letter-writing, which would bo better than lying down flat like this. . . . My word llt is groat to he.ablo to 'yank nigger' and send a ■screaming message hack to the cows that have killed harmless women and children, with their sheila and bombs (under my o.vs) by dropping them into the unfortified towns. "War has its humours. Yesterday while I was yisiting a chum at another battery and was standing with a lot of infantry «hd artillerymen talking peacefully in an alley-way, Old Sausage put over some lovely shrapnel vight above us.. We cleared for our lives, but one of the chaps only dodged into a corner as though he wero playing hide-and-seek, aud sang out: 'You can't find me. You can't find nic, Fritz! 1 It broke the whole mob up. . "To give you" some idea of what a 'strafe' is like, this particular battery of which I write was given a full measure of Hunnish hate recently. In an aero of ground, fortitnately just beyond tho. battery position, tho Huns landed ovor a hundred 9.2 sheila and now not a single blade of grass is visible where formerly was a fine green paddock. Every shell-hole touches tho next, and holes they are too—big enough to make a good cellar if houses were built over them. Not even a rat could have survived in that acre! Another funny thing.happened close by the other day. A big French wagon standing behind a bank was_ spotted by an enemy airman, who mistook it for a gun. Back he went to Iris lines, and Fritz opened up with his heavies, and got it with his twelfth shotspokes, wheels, and wood flying in all directions. I'll bet the Berlin papers included in tho headlines the next day, "Another Battery Silenced!" A later letter from Gunner England concludes: —"Mind you, Frits', sometimes is not so bad a fellow as ho is painted. The road to is also an entrance to our trenches, and four or iivo doors up is a dressing station. Ho can enfilade the road, and whenever a wagon of stores conies down ho exorcises ,hi« right, but if an ambulance wagon is waiting at the station he does'nt r.end any' aver,"