MILITARY MAN-TRAPS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 963, 13 March 1917, Page 8

MILITARY MAN-TRAPS.

DEVILISH DEVICES. FURTHER TEUTONIC NOVELTIES From the very beginning of hostilities (says a writer in a recent exchange) the Germans have shown an incurable propensity to dastardly dodges—dodges inhuman, fiendish beyond telling, and absolutely unparalleled in the whole annals of civilised warfare. Quite apart from the horrible, unspeakable atrocities and ruthless barbarities which have for all time blackened the name of the German army—these will he dealt with in due course before a tribunal which will assuredly ''make the punishment lit the crime"—there are a host of Hunnish tricks which this unscrupulous foe has perpetrated on the field of battle which are undoubtedly "below the belt," to put it mildly. As a deviser of man-traps the Hun is distinctly to be feared. lie cannot "play the game," so one can take nothing for granted. As a chaplain on the Western front said, "Clever is no word for the Boche when it comes to unknighily tricks. We're for ever checkmating some new dodge and plumbing new depths of hook-or-crook warfare." Their inventiveness is always in the .same direction —namely, the perfecting of some new horror. New Horrors. A Hun "novelty" which was used for the first time against the Russians at Krevo is a liquid that kills, and is si ill something of a mystery. When this liquid was fired it produced the sensation of burning. It was not liquid lire, which is an old device on the Russian front, but something that did not openly flame. A man struck, say, on the arms was not disabled, and on the second day thought lightly of the burn, but on the third day, or at latest on the fourth, he died. This new devilry produces clotting of the blood and consequent death. This is not magnificent and it is not war, but it is particularly German. A suffocating revolver, according to a correspondent of a Petrograd journal, is a new weapon which has been distributed among German officers. It is a small and well-made weapon, and. when it is fired, a small cloud of suffocating gas escapes from the cartridge instead of a bullet. The gas does hot cause death, but those who inhale it become insensible for several hours. It is stated that the Germans use this revolver for the purpose of obtaining prisoners near the Russian trenches, their obvious object being to compel these prisoners to divulge information as to what is going on behind the Russian lines. A few weeks ago the Russians succeed'♦' in capturing some of these revolvers, which have been brought to Petrograd. Our own troops in France and Flanders not so long ago made acquaintance with man-traps in the enemy trenches. They are constructed on the principle of the old-fash-ioned rat-trap, with powerful jaws that clasp together when a spring has been released. They are sufficiently strong to break the leg of a soldier who incautiously treads on the "platform" of the trap. In dry weather this barbarous contrivance is covered up with loose earth. In wet weather it is concealed in the mud. Our troops, of course, have been warned of the existence of these devilish devices, and we believe the man-trap has not secured many British or French victims. But it is another example of "frightfulness" added to the long reckoning which one day the "kultured" German will have to face.

"Tortoise Bombs" and "Scarecrows." There is indeed no end to the fiendish ingenuity of the Hun. In recent fighting on the Somme our Tommies found still another instance of it. This takes the form of a "tortoise bomh," it is really a miniature land mine on four short less or horns, which causes an explosion on the smallest impact, such as a kick. The Bodies are laying these along trench parapets and in any place whence they judge the British mean to drive them. Anything, apparently, rather than fair fighting in the open. A similar device employed on the Russian front in order to entrap our Allies' scouts are scarecrows stuffed with explosives. It is sufficient merely to touch the scarecrow for an explosion of tremendous force to ensue. Sometimes little mines are laid beneath the scarecrow, which a soldier hidden in a masked trench explodes on approach of the scouts.

It was the same in South-West' Africa, -where General BoUia himself i was all but blown up by peculiar! land mines, which killed one of his staff. Another of our officers, Col-, onel F. Brennan, of the South Afri-j lean Irish, found 10 mines laid across. ja roadway only eight feet wide. A, i little iron pin came just to the sur- ; I face. And this passed down through I a pipe, to rest at last upon a glass* I tube full of sulphuric acid. Slight pressure broke this tube, i 'and fulminated a mass of blazing gelatine, of which there was enough , iii each charge to kill every living' soul within a zone of a hundred yards. "We had men blown to frag- 1 ments on that road," Colonel Bren-I nan mourns. "Others were blinded j or deformed. One wheel of my own car just grazed a detonating pin. An eighth of an inch to the left, and no; funeral would have been necessary for me or my companion." The Biter Bitten. While scorning to stoop tr> such! unwarlike dodges, upon more than] one occasion the Allies have been able to give the Boehe "a Roland forj his Oliver." How a French oilicer j and a companion, in the course of a desperate hand-grenade fight, turned; the tables on a section of the enemy is a notable case in point. The olHcer himself tells the story:"It was while this light was going on," he says, "that one of my corporals called me. lie had made a dis-; covery that was very interesting and was destined to turn the tables on I the enemy. He look me to a sort of vat that he had found in front of the parapet of the Boehe trench. I recognised it as an apparatus for burning liquid, and hastily studied its mechanism by a pocket-lamp. It was very simple. It needed nothing but the movement of a pump-handle, and was all ready, no doubt, for our reception. "We hurriedly carried the infernal

vat to the mouth of the trench wh?re our comrades were fighting. Some of them had already fallen and were lying there in their blood. The fall of dusk helped us, and we installed the machine without being seen. A spark, and then what a sight! With a hiss a green and red flame shot out like a fiery serpent and spread into a huge fan of flames that submerged the whole trench. "I shall never forget the piercing shrieks and hoarse groans. They were the cries of the damned! The sheet of fire surprised the 3(1 1 Germans who were sheltering behind the barrier of cheveaux-de-frise and firing on us from there. Caught in the wave of fne. they could not fly. They tried to scramble out, but thei* limbs were a mass of burns, ant they could not use them, and their eyes were blinded. After a vain attempt they fell back for ever, and all was over. We were now masters of the trench, nnd during the night my men fortified the position." "s