NEW GERMAN OUTRAGE

Otago Witness, Issue 3334, 6 February 1918, Page 58

NEW GERMAN OUTRAGE

TRAP FOR RED CROSS. Since the fighting on .October 30-31 comparative quiet has prevailed on the main battle front. Shelling on both sides, however, has been almost continuously heavy, the enemy in particular, besides shrapnel and high explosives of all sizes, using great quantities of lachrymatory, mustard, and other gas shells (wrote the Daily News correspondent in France on November 4). More than once recently I have referred to the difficulty of getting in the wounded from these dreadful battlefields, and told how the Germans in various w r ays take advantage of our humanity and the respect wo show for all Rod Cross work. They have invented a new trick. The men in our forward position hear an apparently English voice crying, "Stretcher bearer, stretcher--bearer," from somewhere out in the waste. The patrol goes out in the direction of the sound, and when a little distance away from our lines is fired on by German snipers or machine guns from shellholes. In contrast to this is a letter found on a German prisoner, dated September 28, which reads: "Our stretcher bearers are now on the roads and bringing in the wounded. They carry the Red Cross flag, and can go up to the front line unmolested. The English even let the ambulance drive up without firing." An even more unpleasant story is unfolded in -a diary which wo have captured off men of the Landwehr Division. Less than two miles behind the German front line, in the flooded area beyond the Yser, nearly duo east from Pervyse, on the Belgian front, is a little village called Leke. Naturally, as it is far within the shelled radius, it has long been evacuated by civilians. \ Now, in this diary we find: "Fifty young women and girls have been working on concrete dug-outs at Leke. It ia in the zone of fire, and was shelled no longer ago than yesterday. It is a shameless deed, which cannot bo surpassed even in the imagination. It is all simply incredible. But how does the German- diarist know that this "shameless deed" is being done? The diary telLs us; "It is my duty to take the gang of 47 women to Leke every morning and bring them back in the evening." I have already commented on the extraordinary statement of a recent German communique that in the fighting of October 30 the village of Passchendaele was at one time lost (when wo had never attacked it), but was subsequently recovered by gallant counter-attacks. I referred to the fact that some of our patrols who pushed out bevond our line reported that Passchendaele had been evacuated, and opined that panic had seized the enemy there. We now know from German sources that this Avas true.- The German garrison of the village simply ran from it in terror, but when we showed no sign of occupying the place they wero most gallantly made to go back again by troops which were in reserve for counter-attack. So there re'ally was_a sort of counter-attack after all. ' But it was delivered against their own men, who ran away, and not against the hated English, who did not happen to be there.