KRUPP GUN SHELLED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15767, 16 November 1914, Page 4

KRUPP GUN SHELLED.

USELESS MASS OF STEEL.

BRILLIANT BRITISH DASH.

One of the far-famed Krupp guns, which can only be moved by 42 horses, was destroyed at the Aisne by British horse artillery with a superlative skill and daring. Ihe Germans, says the London Evening News, were moving one of their biggest guns, drawn by a team of forty odd horses, behind a range, of hills. They had to' pass a gap, which exposed them to view. the movement of the gun was screened ny a body of Hussars, but something went amiss with the cavalry at the critical moment, and our gunners, catching sight of the, movement, promptly made up their minds to have a go. The great artillery duel was raging at the full; shells were falling like hail.

There was a sudden clatter of wheels, and out into the open rushed a battery of horse artillery. The war horses, driven at headlong speed, thundered over the uneven ground at racing pace. The guncarriages, almost lifted from the ground by the headlong rush, bounced over the broken surface, while guns were trained on them from every angle, while shells were bursting round them.

Still the gunners rode bravely on through that avalanche of destruction—it was Britain at her best. They reached the angle they had raced for, and the guns slipped into action as though it were a tria l day at the Curragh. The big gun of the enemy, with its long train of horses, came from behind the screen of hills to cross the second gap tlnnked by a squad of cavalry. Then' field artillery spoke, its deep-toned growling scarcely heard amidst the deafening thunder that was shaking the whole battle front like the booming of breakers on cliff crowned coasts. Shell followed shell with* lightning speed and deadly accuracy, the little band of British gunners slipping round their guns with cat-like activity and coolness.

The squad of cavalry in the gap felt the iron hail, and men and horses went down in tangled heaps. The enemy tried valiantly t 0 rush the big gun across the miry ground to the safety of the hills ahead, the horses went down and the men with them; then, like hammers on an anvil, the shells fell upon the long grey gun that Krupps had built for the siege of Paris until it was a useless mass of steel. '