NEW BOMBS AND LAND TORPEDOES.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13745, 7 April 1915, Page 2

NEW BOMBS AND LAND TORPEDOES.

An officer of the Hampshire Regiment, in a letter from the front, describes some fresh instruments of warfare: I have been served out with a wonderful pistol, that fires fireballs. The other night I fired several, and they showed up the ground in front in a wonderful manner. . . We fired a new kind of bomb at the Germans a couple of days ago, and last night one of our patrols reported twenty or thirty bodies in the place where it fell.

. . . The Germans, they say, have now got a land torpedo that burrows under the earth and catches one just about the knees when it explodes. I don't know if it's true, but they are a remarkably ingenious people!

Two of our men who had gone out to repair our barbedv wire last night neticed a German sniper .digging himself in. So they stalked him, and suddenly jumped on him and brought him in praying for mercy. When asked why they did not- bayonet him on the spot the captor explained that he thought it was too cold-blooded a proceding, but, added -'that he "plugged him one on the jaw" as he was shouting "Mercy., mercy!" too loud. In appearance he was insignificant, but smelt very strong.

This is a most extraordinary war ; fellows every day in the ordinary course of their duties do things that in any other war they would get V.C.'a for.