SHELL-FIRE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 92, 15 October 1914, Page 2

SHELL-FIRE

TERRIBLE NERVE STRAIN "BLOWS FROM A GREAT AXE." Back in Paris, I find Parisians rather gloomy (wrote Hamilton Fyfe in the Daily Mail on 27th August). They have had the first really bad news of the war. Gradually the facts of the reverse in Lorraine have been allowed to leak out. In these there is no real cause for depression. But, having begun so well, the French looked for a continuance of victory. The shock of defeat for the moment casts them down. That is the Latin temperament. To-momw they will be as confident as before. I think now of the hot afternoon I spent at Luneville (which as a consequence of their success the Germans have occupied) just before the war began. It is an important military place, only a few miles from the frontier, but no particular value attaches to its capture. Even if Nancy were to bo occupied ac well there would, as I have explained before, be no cause for dismay. This would be unfortunate, but nothing further. * BRAVE IN HARD FIGHTING. The troops from the south are brave in hard fighting. When their blood is up they enjoy it. And when delay meam lying in trenches swept by tho fire of howitzers, unable to ,I'eply, unable to do anything but lie there and wait for the next explosion — then it is that imaginative men feel the strain. A soldier in the hospital at Nancy ha« given an account of his experience under such conditions. "It was eigh^ o'cldclt in the morning," -he says, "when the howitzer shells began to burst about us. The first exploded in front of our trench, the second a little behind. After that they got the rang© all right. The shells burst with mathematical precibion thirty feet above our beads. We were under a perpetual rain of bullets and missiles of eveTy kind, wibh a deafening roar and , screeching all the time. For thirty hours -we had to stand that. " There we were, without closing an eye, without any thought even of eating or drinking, from Thursday morning at eight until Friday afternoon about two. Fortunately, though wo were most of us wounded, we did not have many killed. And after all one Boon gets used even to" fire liko that You can hear the shells coming a long way off. They make a -whistling sound which is like nothing else in the world. Half an hour after they began we were calling out to 'one another and laughing about them. 'Look out there!' someone would say. ' Catch coming on the left,' or 'Now then, in the middle, one for you.' And when we felt that we were wounded we would call out, just as if we were fencing, ' Touche ' (hit)." ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES. , Such courage is magnificent. It is the courage of the great guns of the French Army. The Germans have fled already, not .once nor twice. They have fled before the bayonet. They have bolted from the French artillery fire. The 109 th Regiment, the Bavarian Guard, were utterly broken the other day by having their ranks torn in pieces when the guns suddenly opened upon them. One who saw the battlefield (it was at Brechaumont) writes of it with a sudder in his phrases : "It was frightful. The effect *of melinite shells has been compared to the blow of a giant axe. That is no exaggeration. One has the impression that a ritan has been wielding such a weapon, beating down masses of men to the earth with it. Those who are hit directly are pulverised. Others are killed by the shock of the explosion. The Bavarians could not stand it. They turned and ran in utter confusion." At the same time it is foolish to beheve all the stories which are told about German flights. At the Ministry of War it is admitted that' they are- fighting stubbornly. An army doctor who is with the 10th Army Corps in Alsace speaks of them as being steady under fire as a rule. "The advantages on our side, he wrote, "are (1) that- our gun? are better than the German guns and outrange them ; (2) that our gunners are more accurate in their aim ; (3) that the Germans arc so terribly panicky under bayonet charges; and (4) that their spirit is nothing like so keen as that of our men. On the other hand, they have three things in their favour : their steadiness under fire, their methodical arrangements, and their extraordinary systenrof espionage." j TERRIFIC EFFECT. The keenness of the French makes the task of their officers sometimes difficult. A corporal of infantry chasseurs tells in a letter to his wife how "our officers were obliged to get in front" and pull out their revolvers to keep | the men from rushing a hill before the order for the assault came." And here is the complaint of a wounded soldier j who passed*" through Versailles a day or two ago on his way to Nantes. " Conj found those X-rays," he said. "If it weren't for them I shouldn't be here. You see I was in that business at Margiennes. Our guns pulled the i ' Albosches ' up short, and then we went I for them with the bayonet, and they ran. , The officers didn't, though. They stood their ground and let us have it. I felt three shocks in my arm, not pain- : ful, but just as if someone had hit me with a stick. I didn't bother about * them until we were called oft for fcai> of an ambush, ami then I only wanted tho places bound up. But the doctor j used the X-rays and found ons of the bullets had scraped the bone, and so | they're sending me to Nantes. They might o^ well have shipped me to the j Ncth Pole !" | W'lu'ti iuliliery fire is kept up through r! 3 night tho effect is terrific. At Liege Uio .spectators of the bombardment, a-c-"Jiding to a letter from one of them, soon grew accustomed to the noise, but could not get over " the immense ' aurora ; borpalis ' by which the sky was lib up pvery night. Thp darkness in every direction was torn by spouts and flashes ot flame. It was just as if a colossal firework display were going on over an extent of many miles." x Imagine yourself exposed for nights and days to this infernal harrowing by o.ii onwny whom you cannot see and you will nob wonder at tbo nerves of 'untried troops occasionally giving v/a-y. At all events the incident is closed ' now. fl Watch the lug evfiit," cries V.. A\Ji'cd Capua, the playwright, i:i the Figaio. On flu, insue of the battle now begun depends the duration of the war. If the Germans arc decisively beaten, another two months should 'sec their strength exhausted. Whether they will bo beaten depends not upon tho armies, but upon Hie gonoral.-. A recent German Minister of War said, "It is not the men who will count, nor the material of war. The real question is, Have- the French a Napoleon or have we a Yon M^Rke?" That question is bping decided now.

During eleven days at the Trotithani military camp tho attendances at tho .Salvation Army's meetings in -the niarqueo were 2690, the total number of persons visiting Ihe tent «ns 4435, while tho number of letters written was 1356. The marquee is being re-erected on the rifle range, and, with Ensign Garner in charge, will continue this very acceptable service. Tenders arc invited for the purchase ot the hulks Coromandel and Enterprise, now ia W«sllingrton harbour^