HAIG'S BLOWS

Marlborough Express, Volume LI, Issue 198, 22 August 1917, Page 2

HAIG'S BLOWS

EFFECT ON GERMANS

"THESE NAMELESS NOISES."

LONDON, Aug. 7

The New York Times's Hague correspondent states that Max Osborn, in the Berlin Zeitung Ammittag, gives a most vivid description of the terrific strain caused by the British bombardment on the Teuton in Flanders.

"Nerve-breaking howls and screams .are rending the air," says Max Osborn, "from the sea to the river Lys. The whole of the west af Flanders is one large steaming-pot, wherein brew death and devastation, with the sun laughing its brightest at us. A terrific, never-ending thunderstorm is raging over the land, midst noises such as the earth has not heard before* : and millions of capital is being blown up. It is like a Cyclopean concert of unheard of brutality, becomingly celebrating the ending of the third year of universal madness. We thought we were accustomed to the -atrociousness of all this, but it is no use here up against the worst form of •slaughter. Again these nameless ■noises bring it to you with overpowering force. Our soldiers sit in dug-outs like unlocked prisoners;, they cannot see anything but trust to luck. Only the big guns are now. talking; the infantry cannot get out; nobody can approach them; yet they fight fearful danger all round—steel splinters, shrapnel, bullets, and stones. The soldiers smoke incessantly until the air in the dug-outs is heavy. This helps them to stand the horrors of the situation. One is tunable to think clearly. I never realised such a. difficult existence; there is the of. nameless thoughts. The "losses are not so large compared with the mass of munitions exploded. The enemy's projectiles, though striking many metres distant, hit our nerves. Nobody will-ever forget the horror of it." ■. ' .'