NIGHT ATTACK – AND PRISONERS

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 364, 10 April 1915, Page 3

NIGHT ATTACK - AND PRISONERS

By Xavier Sager.

cj|| The evening closes I II in ' The sky aS *" are ours —spies which describe a ffls3P**Wg very large orbit and /V' go down yonder, fur U behind us, toward their nest. The lreoi» that confronts us is completely invisible. From here one does not distinguish it even by its thin trendies. The infantry is buried in deep holes. The plain is frightfully 4eserted. Still, some thousands of eyes watch it, some thousands of guns, fixed on the ground, wait threatening, silent. * * * Night is come. The winter nights are long. Silence and obscurity fall-on the , plain. We eat supper late, at seven - o'clock, in order to retard the moment when we must be alone. Fires bum actively under ground, invisible from the • outside, and we throw ourselves down to try to sleep and forget. i . The cannon cease not their roarings, that seems to be stronger still in the calm, ".dark night. The moon pierces the gray clouds—a full moon. So long .as she lights the woods and the plain with her paie rays there. is no danger that the enemy will quit the trenches, -but as soon as she sinks on the horizon, or the fog rises, one must expect and be ready for all. One sleeps or one awakes. It is no Jonger unnerving as at first, when on hearing the first shotof a rifle the whole line was instantly on its feet. .- Prom time to time some one laughs, Bome one gets tip and lights his pipe. Some one growls in dreaming; some one whom sleeplessness annoys strolls 4»bout in the back trench. *••** ♦ ' ♦. ■

One o'clock in the morning. , It is now my turn to mount guard. I get up shivering, my teeth chattering, feet frozen, hands heavy, limbs stiff and my eyes swollen, with sleep. I am more alone than :in , a desert. A blue gray fog level with the ground. No noise in the air save the distant cannon roars. Above I discern the sky, which is less clear now, and the floating clouds, which grow more massive. Astke fog rises the eye no longer distinguishes anything beyond a few feet. The obscurity gives us a feeling of inquietude, of ner.vousness. * * * One can combat seen forces, but unseen and imagined possibilities increase the mystery of shadows. *l* * ihe hearing is intensified Hallucination suggests and augments the 'strain of the nervous tensions. Our sight would like to pierce the gloom. The pitchy darkness soon creates images.

, One must struggle against so many things the enemy, sleepiness, cold, silence, fatigue, imagination, isolation, memories and mysteries. Suddenly the silence seems to increase perceptibly. * * * What is going on in this gloom? The wind veering brings to us a noise as of iron being hurled. Our eyes search in all directions. This dark night everything seems suspicious. There must be no surcease of intent watching, no inattention of the mind. An instant off guard and the enemy would profit by it * * * "Oh! to break through the gloom and illuminate the field with our gaze." * * * From where come the sounds? * * * * * * *

Suddenly a near rifle shot. But from where? Alert! * * * Then there is no longer the heavy intermittent silence. All the sentinels fire into the gloom. * * * A volley of bullets whistles over our heads. Already the sleepers are on their feet in a hubbub of exclamation and swearings. The fusillade, increaoing from second to second, tears the echoes. The Boches (Germans) have approached quite near to us without being discovered. They are scarcely twenty yards away, and their shots seem to be fired in our very ears. * * * What are they about to do? * * * AdVance? * * * Hetreat? Fortunately our barbed wire is pretty solid. Now one can hear the German officers giving their orders. ''Vorwaerts' Vorwaerts!" •They rush upon us. A terrible fj re meets them, and those who arc most in advance, caught by the intricacies of the twisted wire, fall heavily. \y e g ], oot into the bunch with a joyous exaltation. We are panting and the perspiration pours from our temples. A furnace is burning in each heaving breast. All that mass before us, creeping, springing, falls riddled with shots. The screaming and groaning of the wounded dominate the battle. Their spirit in surely spent, their firing is loss arduous and we hear their officers swearing. A joyous exaltation enfever.s us. * + « Just at this moment the clouds arc broken by a great gust of wind and, dispersing, uncover the moon iu the less obscure sky.

In a few seconds till is revealed. It has been carnage, a butchery. Not a place where there is not several bodies entangled in the wire, covered with blood, with faces convulsed frightfully, .from this slaughter proceed lugubrious plaints and moauings. Some hundreds •of them lie there dead or wounded in front of our trench. # * * * ■ ' * * * All at once we shudder in spite of ourselves. A clarion sounds the charge, Another replies from the centre, a third from the other end, another and another, ten, twenty, all the trumpets of the brigade sound in unison, "Forward, the bayonet!"

All emerge from the trench. Springing, bounding all go forward, eyes shut. The ground lashes ug; gulfs are opened; explosions make us reel; volcanoes flame, and the lights blind us. The flux of gas ia suffocating. Thus blinded, deafened, asphyxiated, strangled, these physical impressions do away with all thoughts, all instincts. The "baches" have regained' their trenches. We pursue them, but the barbed wire entraps and flays the legs, painfully gashing the hands. In vain it is cut; one is obliged to submit to the fire of the Germans' rifles that crash from twenty yards* distance. * * * At last wo arrive. Their trenches vomit them in masses. It is a frightful mftlee. Some bodies turning, fall backward into the bottom of the trench. The "bodies" fall like marionettes, their moving mass undecided, incapable alike of advancing or retreating. It is now that one bears a supplicating voice, followed by 10, 100, 800, 500 crying out in unison like tracked animals who do not want to die. "Kamerad! Pardon, pas kaput!" ("Do not kill us.")

These words in a moment filled the air and are immediately followed by the orders from our officers. "Halt! Cease firing!" ***** Soldiers are always very curious to see their enemies at a close view. We press round the unhappy wretches, dirty, thin, pitiful, and they as soon as we have disarmed them implore, "Kamerad, pas kaput I" I can still see mentally a Uavariau soldier whose chin had been smashed by a bullet. He gave me his rifle with a shaking hand. I offered him my flask. Ho drank and thanked me with a smile that was made awful by his pain. This military pity acts without effusion; this fraternity of combatants wlio do not wish to be enemies ortside of the battle seems to me very fine. We have made GOO prisoners. They Bcem no longer men. They have in their eyes a fixed, demented look and they tremble. They do not seem to be conscious of what has passed. One would like to leave them there, all alone. ,It is

certain they would not try to escape. They have no strength left, and terror has taken their arms and legs. I accompany this convoy of prisoners to an evacuation station. What a sad defile marching in the battle mud of Flanders at six o'clock in the morning, while the dawn slowly spreads, gray and indefinite. $ * * * * I cannot tear my thoughts from these wrecks, overwhelmed under the weight of their disillusionment. They, as prisoners, go through the villages that they had been promised they should enter as victors. And when they see the crowd muttering and threatening, they arc reminded of cold acts of cruelty, and they must ask themselves whether they will have to submit to some terrible reprisals. The crowd is composed of widows, of children without fathers. These remember the abominable crimes and massacres, the pillaging and burning of the towns. War is war; vanquished courage merits respect, but treason calls for opprobium. The GOO prisoners marched with bowed

heads; they had the decency not to look at these ruins, these widows, these orphans. The prisoners are for the greater part reservists who had boon obliged to leave thejr belongings at the beginning of the Avar. Now they desire neither glory nor victory, only repose and to return to their firesides. I feel truly a pity for most of the prisoners, who arc neither of the dead nor of tlie living. Their strength and will are wrecked. Yet they have, per-' haps, simply done their duty. They are not all assassins. There are some, no doubt, who are biave. * * * However, tlio German who lias killed my brother will never be my brother. At length wc are ic the large waitiug room of the station at. ¥ . The prisoners are submitted to an inquiry, especially the officers. To the questions there are invariably the same replies:— "We know nothing. We have never stolen, pillaged or set on fire." 15ut if by contrast they are accorded any favor, coffee, soup, cigarettes, &c,

it often happens that their tongues are lossened and they make some very Interesting confessions. Usually the prisoners do not talk much, and one does not say much to them, even when the ignorance of the Teutonic language is not an obstacle. What, common subject of conversation could we have? Tiie war? But this is an irritating question for those who have not the same point of \iew or the same sympathies. JLJesidos, the simple German soldier is very ignorant of the causes and purposes of the war and even of the events. lie seems to have understood nothing, lie is going only where he was ordered to go—to l'aris! Yes, they will not forget that Paris has only been seen by the "bodies" as prisoners since the war. All sorts of things arc found on the German prisoners—vatches, bracelets, jewelry, poeketbooks padded with bank notes and marked still by a red thumb; medals, letters from well beloved ones and from wives. These letters give some news of the country that awaits the

glorious return of Hjd heroes and ask them albope ail net to forget to bring them back some souvenir. *** * * Manifestly at first every prisoner expects to be shot, and does not raise his head, except on being surprised by a bowl pf hot, savory soup instead of twelve 4 balls. To eat is something important—aud the special dream of supreme -luxury ■ of- the German prisoner. This primordial love of eating is recorded in all the German correspondence; one cannot say if it is owing to a large, natural appetite or from having felt a ~ long famine. The same ordinary food i* served to the German prisoners as to our own soldiers. Those who are ill are given now. and again special wine.. . .* At the hospital a doctor-major oncetold me a Bavarian asked that-the nursea should not every day commence the distribution of victuals at the same .end of the ward, because he found that his'com-] rades commenced by taking the largest pieces and he was the last. They, are great savage children that have only, been rendered cruel and wicked by the barbarous orders that they have received from their chiefs. They fraternize willingly with their guardians and •do not interest : themselves in passing - events. They no .longer fight; for them the war is finished. The Germans seem to bring to their captivity the docility that has made them submissive to their chiefs? They do not attempt to get away. To try "to" escape is an individual act, and these" people seem able to act only in common. • An escape demands a rare firmness of:' soul as well v as -favorable circumstances/ I have seen many German -.prisoner* during the last five months and I caa only say that at our hand they do not suffer, for they are treated as'we, if. captured, should'like to be treated by them. ■•' -■• •'"' I ; ,c: >..-..- -..* *-*■♦,*-.'..;- Eleven o ? clock' in the ■ morning. The train is in the station. The rank, and, file of the prisoners get into the third class compartments. At cacli entrance a territorial watches with his bayoneted rifle. In the middle of the train, in a second class carriage," the German officers talk together in low voices. '. * Full—the moving prison is set in mo? tiori to transport them to the place tiief are to be held. - -