NOTES AND CAMPAIGN INCIDENTS

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 107, 6 May 1916, Page 13

NOTES AND CAMPAIGN INCIDENTS

INCIDENTS AT VERDUN WOUNDED FRENCH OFFICER'S STORY A PRUSSIAN CAPTAIN'S QUESTION. In Paris we have not yet imagined that, we hear the cannon which have been booming at Verdun . for more than a week. In Holland, which ia not more than thirty miles r.earer, and in Rhenish Prussia, r.earer still, they maintain they hear the big guns. AIJ the world trembles in this war of wars. I have sought out some of the human happenings, which are not likely to be telegraphed in battle news (writes a correspondent in the New York Post). Here is an officer's story: — '"I shouted Forward!' remembering I was an officer and my duty was to run ahead. As I.neared the German line, I felt a blow on 'my shoulder as if someone had struck me with a whip. At first I did not understand I was wounded.. We did not. stay; and a little further on I began losing rny breath and my sight grew dim. To right of me there was a deep hole—a funnel dug by a 280 shell. I jvmped into it The funnel was large," with sliding sides and a slippery clay bottom. I sat down on the ground, with my arm hurting me. I Jit a cigarette and began smoking. I could hear the cannon thundering, the machine-guns cracking, and the shrapnel I shells hissing as they exploded. I felt ( very ill and frightened and closed my eyes. "I lost consciousness for an hour. When I came to myself, I saw a German, an officer in a grey-green overcoat and a round cap of tlie same colour. He was in front of me, looking at me. I tried to got up, but he said in French: 'You are my prisoner. Keep sitting down.' And he pointed a littb revolver at me. "I answered : 'Fire!' HE LOWERED HIS REVOLVER "I was sure he was going to kill me. Contrary to my expectation, he lowered his revolver., He even seemed to me to have a smile on his face. His face was tanned and covered with rough hair, and' no longer young, and he'had great blue eyes. After a moment's silence, he said: 'I might have killed you. But I_ don't wish to. Here we are both of us," prisoners at the bottom'of this hole.' He added, with a military salute: 'Capt. Muller, of the Two Hundred and Thirtyeighth Prussian Regiment.' "I gave my own name in return. "We were now seated on the opposite sides of the funnel, he a German and I a, Frenchman. We felt uneasy and were silent, and I tried not to look at him. "I answered, 'Don't bother yourself.' " 'Yes.' " 'Let me put on a dressing.' "I answered, Don't bother yourself. "But he came over to '■ me and took out absorbent cotton and a bandage for the dressing. When he touched me with his hands, there was a strange metamorphosis—he ceased to be a German, an enemy abhorred, a man who had been trying to kill me, one of those who, with arms in their hands, had been devastating our country. Ho was only Capt. Muller, a, chance companion, almost goo.d company. He dressed my wound rapidly, with an experienced hand. When he had finished, he smiled and said—'So!' " I said, ' Thank you !' " Then he sat down by me, and we continued silent. The gun firing never stopped, and at times a grenade exploded quit* near us. The ground trembled, a. think, dark column floated high up, and all around us was the odour of things burning and sand and smoke. Neither one of us stirred ; we did not wish to show that we were afraid. Toward evening the firing grew hotter. The German listened to the noise of the cannon. , ' Those are yours. These are ours. That is the 120—there is the 75—that is the 77 — there is tho 75 again.' DRANK FROM THE 'SAME BOTTLE. " I had a fever and my arm hurt me badly. I said : 'Have the kindness to take the bottle out of my pocket, there is brandy in it.' '' We drank the brandy from the mouth of the same bottle—he first and then I. After we had drunk, he blushed and opened his big blue eyes at me, and asked : ' Have you any children' •"'No.' "'And I have two at home.' "He got up and began talking and gesticulating :' I have a brickyard in Hanover. I am a man of peace. All my life I have managed the brickyard. I wanted peace, and here I am at "war. You, too, wanted peace, and you went to the war. And now we are living like moles. We sleep in the water. Every minute we risk our lives, every minute we kill one another. The whole world is turned topsy-turvy—black has become white, and white black. Tell me, why are we at war?' "'Your Emperor William wanted it.' " 'Ah ! yes—William. And did my children want it? William wanted war and they did not want it—and I listened, not to my children, but to William. And here I am, in the strange land of France, with yon in this hole. And perhaps to-day 1 shall be killed. It will be I or yon. For whom ? for what ? for France? for Germany?, for a brickyard ? And when will the war be over ? When shall we get home again? Or shall we never return ? Tell me why we are making war?' "I wanted t to answer and say to him that wo %vere defending our country, ■and that Germans had not been asked to come into it. But I felt- myself hurled towards the sky, hot and without air to breathe; and everything was coloured red. It lasted, perhaps a second, or perhaps a century. When " I came to myself, I saw that the banks of the funnel had crumbled, and the hole was smaller and deeper. From beneath the moving clamp soil two feet in worn boots projected, and, close beside me, lay an officer's cap with the visor torn off. I understood that the man who had been talking with me was killed. I tried to rise but I could not. I lost consciousness. Dining the night, comrades of my regiment found me and picked mo up." This was the wounded French officer's story as he told it at the table of a Boulevard cafe. Night was falling and ths street lamps were lighting. It was cold. No one i spoke, and no one cared to listen more. The next, is not a soldier's own story of battle, but a letter written from the French front—and quite as real. It is also an officer .who writes: — "You would like to know what is at the bottom of our thoughts, among us who are fighting. Well, I will tell you , vthii I think, I have eojiutj to jt Jrcan

i studying my men, for you know your men" when you suffer with them. COURAGE EASILY STIRRED. ''While we are in the trenches, because of-weather or of the enemy .stirring up things, no one is very contented —but it needs sq very little to give courage to us all. A word, or the sight of a. comrade killed, is enough to make us invincible. Oh '. what wonderful soldiers we have. They are the real children of Napoleon's.'grognards,' for they grumble at anything and everywhere— but they are ready, too, for everything. Do you'need volunteers to lay the barbed wire, they are ready; for patrol duty, they arc ready again—and so on for ever. •'Just now, we are making of our bodies a living wall that cannot be broken through—and you can't imagine the confidence thai reigns here. We know we shall have them—none of us doubts it—perhaps by a decisive battle that may cost us too dear sacrifices; but we shall have them in the long run, for our mastery over the enemy grows all the time. "Remember, if to have the victory we shall have to leap into the fiery furnace again, we are always ready to go." This letter was written by one who has had experience in the war with all its fury. Not so long ago he took part in the fighting at Champagne, which has been surpassed only now around Verdun. He shows what the men have been trained to do for their country and their homes. A soldier writes to reassure his family while the battle is on: "They have been torpedoing us. I was up on top. of a little heap of earth—and the shell took the little heap and me on top of it, and when I came down I was in the next line of trenches. A 'poilu' was there and he asked me if I was practising aviation !" Another tells the story of a ■ stoutheart waiting : "We sleep little, huddled together and on the damp ground. Still it's no matter, provided only we may soon say : 'Forward ! Charge bayonets!' and get it over with these nasty Bosches." Another, on picket duty, lets his feelings go back to those who are his own and whom no foreign invader has a right to take from him: "To-morrow lam to go into the first line of trenches. Tonight a soldier is whistling a tune which I put to words for myself: 'For my country, for my home, for Madeline, I am going to fight—for my children) for their mother!'" •