THE DEADLY MINE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 701, 10 May 1916, Page 6

THE DEADLY MINE.

MECHANISM OF MODERN FIGHTING. i GRIM STORY OF VERDUN. i A ghastly story of the mechanism |of modern lighting was told by a (wounded sapper, now in hospital, who was in charge of the foremost Unine during the attack on Pepper 'Hill (N.W. of Verdun). His orders [were to wait till the enemy was fairjly on the mined ground. Then he was to press the electric button. He was 120 yards in front of the fore[most trench. He had crawled there through a subterranean passage, and was crouched in a hole covered with iearth, and having a tiny peephole through which to observe the adIvan ce.

He saw in the dawn of the early .morning the grey mass advancing j.slowly under tire. The tire lessened, then ceased. The Germans rushed forward. When they were 200 yds from the mine the French trench opened fire with small arms and quick-firing guns. The sapper in the hole saw the first line of Germans j falter, throw themselves on their faces, and heard the men swear. He heard the officers' orders, saw and i heard the snap and bark of the officers' revolvers as they tried to force the laggards forward.

j They yelled like madmen, obviously drunk with ether, then, suddenly howling the "Wacht am Rheim," j rolled forward in close formation. They had to climb over their own dead, and were like stampeded animals rather than men. The Awful Button.

The sapper believed himself to bo going mad. In anticipation of the horror which must follow, his hand was stiff and heavy. He thought, he says, he would never have strength to press the electric button. His blood seemed to boil in his temples. When the advancing column reached the mined ground the sapper threw the whole weight of his body on the button.

"It was like the end of the world," |he said. "The noise was awful. The 'earth rose like a waterspout, and swallowed the wave of humanity. Bodies blew up in fragments. Whatever life reserves for me, I shall never forget that moment. I crawled back on all fours along the subterranean passage. I was wounded by a shell just as I reached the trench, and came to myself again here in the hospital.*' I spent a great part of Saturday in interviewing wounded men on the ambulance trains returning from the front, and have seen many pathetic sights. The most pathetic of all, perhaps, was the unexpected meeting at the little station between a mother and her son. She went along the train enquiring of every man who wore one regimental number, tho sight of which made her heart throb, for news of her son.

"Yes, I saw him. He was quite well when I left him, the only damage being a broken eyeglass," somebody told her. Then a weak voice from the next earriage interrupted: "I am here, mother," it said. "The eyeglass was broken first, but my arm was broken afterwards. I am quite all right. The doctor says I may be put off here to stay with you till I can go to the front again." Matchwood. The stories these men told of the terrible destruction done by the French mitrailleuses in the lighting on the hill slopes and in the woods were ghastly hearing. "We mowed them down in such numbers that sometimes they were so tightly packed that they remained standing," said one man. "The numbers of the dead prevented them from falling over. The woods were literally smashed into matchwood. Aeroplanes hummed overhead like huge crows, dropping bombs."

All these men talk with amazement of the immense stocks of ammunition; with glee of the constant flow of reinforcements, with confidence of the ultimate result; and the refrain "Passeront pas" ("they cannot break through") rolls along from carriage to carriage of every ambulance train tilled with wounded men.

One young chasseur who fought under Colonel Driant, a deputy, who is believed to have been made a prisoner in the Bois des Caures, described the colonel's last little speech before the attack. "Lads," said the colonel, "the Germans know that things are going badly for them, but they will make desperate efforts because they must do so to place their new loan. They will try at all cost to take Verdun or break our front. Don't let them do it." "He talked to us as an intelligent man to intelligent men," said the young chasseur. "The German officers don't; they bully their men with drawn revolvers after drugging them lirsl."—Exchange.