THE INTERRUPTED CONCERT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15825, 23 January 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE INTERRUPTED CONCERT.

SHELLS STOP GERMAN BAND.

GUNS FOR THE GENERAL.

M. Tvdes ;, who has recently visited the Woevre, has an amusing story to }el! of General ven Strants, the commander-in-chief of the army of Metz, and an interrupted concert. The general has established m's headquarters at Chambley. More modestly his staff has quartered itself at the little hamlet of Woel, 1200 yds from the advance trenches of the French.

For several Thursdays, to amuse his staff, General von Strants sent his own band of musicians down to the little village. Precisely at three o'clock the musicians entered, followed bv a smart white limousine carrying the general. Seeking the shelter of the tienches, they began their concert, and for an hour the French 'n their lines heard the burets of Wagner and strains of a Viennese waltz.

The first Thursday the concert passed without interruption. The second Thursday also. The third the concert was attended by commandants, colonels, and two generals. Then the fourth Thursday, November 26, came, and had you been in tho French lines you would have noted on the night preceding a great movement of trench troops and 'wtteiies along the road leadinj to Riaville, nine miles from Woel. Carefully the heavy guns were placed in position and hidden under branches of trees. The commander inchief was there. Colonel D.mdelot, one of the youngest of the great French artillery masteis, himself laid the guns. The artillerymen laughed with a gleeful malice. It was evident that a good joke ■was in preparation.

At three o'clock, in the hamlet of Woel. the preparations for the concert were made. The musicians walked through the village with the parade step. From his whit© car the general descended, and took his place in a plush armchair, looted from a neighbouring house. The leader of the band lifted his baton.

-And then the rain came. One after another the shells of the heavy French guns, nine miles away, began to fall on the village and the trenches. The concert broke up in confusion. The general sought his white limousine, but a shell had blown the inside out. and he had to make his way back to Chambley in an ambulance car. Twenty -oik- shots exactly were fired, the regulation salut<j for high personages. "Wo Are Quits!"

'Politeness for politeness!" said the general on the French side, who told -U. Tudesq the story. ." We were quits. ' By one. of those coincidences which are bound to occur along a great line of trenches, the Germans were able to revenge themselves by breaking up a French concert near Rheims three days later. This concert was a particularly smart little affair. On the programme, a copy of which has been sent to the Temps, appeared the names of M. Firmin Touche, the firgt violin of the Paris Opera, and M. Cassagne. of the Opera Comique. the former being a stretcher-bearer in the Army Medical Corps. The programme, which should have opened with the Russian National Anthem, in honour of the Russian victories, was most elaborate and choice. The scene of this little concert was one of the great, * wine press houses near Rheims, belonging, in times of peace, to a famous champagne firm. Unhappily, just as the piano was being arranged on the stage, the Germans began a furious bombardment., arid the very first shell lifted the instrument in the air. and riddled the piano stool with shrapnel. While the smoke and dust were clearing away M. Touche arrived calmly carrying his violin under one arm and a "saxophone under the other. But the general decided thai the concert must be postponed. The chagrin of the violinist, who had walked three miles to keep his engagement, was a little pathetic.