TALES OF WOUNDED

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 78, 30 September 1915, Page 7

TALES OF WOUNDED

'NEUVE CHAPELLE A TRIFLE. THE DEADLY SECOND LINE. LONDON. 29th September An officer of the Gurkhas states that Neuve Cliapelle was trifling compared with Saturday. He says :—": — " We lay in the trenches on Friday night, unable to sleep owing to the awful crash of the artillery. The Gurkhas were simply burning -with anxiety' for the approach of daylight. "The guns gave the German trenches the la-st ten minutes of hell at 6 in the morning. Then, -with a hurricane of yells, we raced three hundred yards to the trenchesi, which were practically blotted out. The 13th Bavarians threw down their arms and surrendered all along the line. So we went on to the second line, where the full blast of the machine-guns met us. .1 dropped, but the Gurkhas gained the second line." Another wounded man narrates : — " A German, at point-blank range, shot a Britisher in the jaw Then he flung up his hands and shouted: f I surrender.* The wounded man lea,pt up and put a bayonet through him We cannot give fiends like that mercy." A wounded corporal said : — " I had never been in hell before Saturday I was in charge of a party of nine bombthrowers, of whom seven went down before we were within bombing distance, but we flung 130 bombs into the German second line. The enemy rained grenades. My chum and I were wounded." RUSHING THE GERMAN LINES. 29th September. A number of French wounded from the Champagne have arrived. They state that the infantry attack began at noon on Saturday. For the three previous days the big French artillery made an appalling din day and night without ceasing. „ " Our leaders, on the stroke of twelve, cried, ' Forward. ' We shouted like men. possessed, and leaped out of the trenches with a single bound There was hot work in front of us, where the lads, of the first line were doing good business. They were beyond the Bosches' trenches, and we went at the double to them." The wounded French soldier continues : " I saw piles of German dead farther on, and craters in which numbers of Bosches were buried beneath the earth. I did not rush again. I sighted some of the enemy with machine-guns in. a pit, and we dashed on them with the bayonet. There was a stiff, fight. The survivors shouted, ' Kamerad.' and threw down their arms. One officer begged for mercy, saying he had a wife and children, and offered money when he was spared." Another wounded soldier said that his company reached the artillery positions. Gunners and infantry were huddled round the guns, holding up their hands. The French artillery had made them, idiots. There were all kinds of soldiers, old and young, all possessed of one idea. — to be spared.