NEW GERMAN OUTRAGE.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14621, 28 January 1918, Page 2

NEW GERMAN OUTRAGE.

TRAP FOR RED CROSS

HOW PASSCIIENDAELE GARRI-

SON RAN IN TERROR.

After the fighting on October 30th31st comparative quiet prevailed on the main battle front. Shelling on both sides, however, has been almost continuously heavy, tlie enemy in particular, besides .shrapnel and high explosives of all sizes, using great quantities of lachrymatory, mustard, and other eras shells (wrote the- "Daily News" correspondent in France on November 4th).

More, than once recently..! have referred to the difficulty of getting in the wounded from these dreadful battlefields, and told bow the Germans in various ways take advantage of our humanity and the respect we show for all Red Cross work. They have, invented a new trick. The men in our forward position hear an apparently English voice crying, "Stretcher bearer, stretcher bearer," from somewhere out in the waste. Tlie patrol goes out in the direction of the sound, .and when a| little distance away from our lines is fired on by German snipers or machineguns from shell boles.

' In contrast to this is a letter found on a German, prisoner, dated September 28th, which roads: "Our etretcher bearera are now on the roads and bringing in the wounded. They carry the Red Cross flag, and can go up to tlie frontline unmolested. The-English even let the ambulance drive up without fuir.g." TOLD BY GERMAN DIARIST. .

An even more unpleasant story is unfolded in a diary which we have captured of. men of the Landwehr Division. Loss than two miles behind the German front line, in the flooded area beyond tlie Yser, nearly due east from Pervyse. on the Belgian front, is a little village called Leke. Naturally, as it is far within the shelled radius, it has long been evacuated by civilians.

Now, in this diary we find: "Fifty young woman and girls have been working, .on concrete dug-outs at Leke. It is in the zone of fire, and was shelled no longer ago. than yesterday. It is a shameless deed, which cannot be surpassed even in imagination. It is ali simply incredible."

But how does the German diarist know tj^at tins "shameless deed" is being done The diary tells us: "It is my duty to take the gang of fortyTseven womon to Lake every morning and bring them back in the evening."!

PASSCHRNDAELE "COUNTER- ■ ATTACK." I have already commented on the extraordinary statement of a recent German communique- that in the fighting of October 30th the village of Pas-sc-heudacle was at one time lost (when we had never attacked it), but was subsequently recovered by gallant coun-ter-attacks. I referred to the fact that some of our patrols who pushed out beyond our line reported that Passeliendaele had been evacuated, and opined that panic had-seized the enemy there. Wo now know from German sources | that this was true. The German garrison of the village simply ran fronr-it in terror, but when we showed no sign ox occupying the place they were most gallantly made to go back by troops which w.ere in reserve for counter-at-tack. So there really was a sort of I counter-attack after all. But it was j delivered against their own men. who ran away, and not against the lia'tbd English, who did not happen to be there.