A TRAGIC STORY

Otago Witness, Issue 3382, 8 January 1919, Page 53

A TRAGIC STORY

A POILU AND A TELESCOPE. This is the tragic story of an observation post (writes a correspondent with the American army in France). It is perhaps the most j-emarkable observation post on the entire front, for though -the ruins of the old baron's castle that shelters it show for miles of country round like a beacon against the sky, no man may ever, be seen approaching or leaving it. You have first to clamber by a goat's track, almost perpendicular in places, some 900 feet into the air, and then for 300 or 400 more to crawl right into the bowels of the hill by a tunnel four feet high, pitch dark, and all slime and water, that bends, descends, and ascends in a most bewildering fashion till it gives final entry by a trap-door into a tiny concrete chamber with a narrow slot some four inches wide for a window, and, for furniture, a chair, a shelf, a telescope, and a telephone. - ,< Under the observation of this post is a red-roofed village some three miles away. One day a poilu, who happened to be quartered in the neighbouring town, was brought up to the post because his home happened to be in that very village, and he had begged to be allowed to see it. The soldier remained for some time with his cheek glued to the eyepiece, muttering with mingled ecstacy and apprehension of What he saw. Suddenly he started away from the telescope with a cry as though about to greet someone beside him; but at once, pressing his eye again to the lens, poured forth a torrent of incoherent tenderness and entreaty. After a while he became calmer, continuing to gaze with pentup longing of years, and the observers had not the heart to rob him of the vision. Suddenly he became excited. He gesticulated wildly and burst into a fury of wrath. The observers, fearing injury to their instruments, tried to drag him away from the telescope, and then, realising that he was imbued with a madman's strength, thought it wiser to let him go on looking. He had, as they gathered from his disjointed utterances, seen a German threatening his wife, and ijj spite of its horror he had to see what would come of it. Fortunately the threats did not that time resolve Presently his wife passed out of Ms view, and the poor fellow collapsed altogether, and, covering his face with his hands, burst into tears.