THE FIGHTING IN GREECE

West Coast Times, Issue 10534, 19 July 1897, Page 4

THE FIGHTING IN GREECE

HOW MEN BEAR THEMSELVES UNDER FIRE. A London Times letter, describing the fighting at Velestino, gives a remarkably vivid picture of what an engagement is really like. Here are some points as to the bearing of troops under fire :— " The men in the first trench received us with cheerful nods and scraped out a place beside them, and covered the moist earth with their blankets. They exhibited a sort of childish satisfaction at being under fire. As the day wore on they became languidly bored with it all, and some sang iv a low, crooning tone, and others, in spite of the incessant rush of shells, dozed in the full glare of the sun, and still others lay humped and crouched against the earthworks, exclaimnig bitterly when the projectiles tore up the ramparts on uhe hill behind us. Some of the officers walked up and down, and directed the men in the trench at their feet witbu the air of judges or timekeepers at an athletic meeting whoiwere observing a tug-of -war. Others exposed themselves in what looked like a spirit of braggadocia, for they moved with a swagger, and called upon the men to notice how brave they were. Other officers rose only when it was necessary to observe some fresh movement on the enemy, and they did this without the least haste, and simply as a part of their work, and regarded the bullets that instantly beset them as little as though they were so many flies. The Turks were about seven hundred yards distant, behind hushes and impromptu earth works, and, in consequence, what im \ pressed one most about the fighting was that it was impossible to awaken the soldiers to any degree » of enthusiasm when they could see nothing of the enemy but drif tiing whiffs of white smoke or a long black blot on the green prairie." The " shrieking shrapnel," of which one reads in the description of every battle, did not sound to the Times correspondent so much like a shriek as it did like the jarring sound of telegraph wires when someone strikes the poles from which thej hang, and when they passed very close the noise was like the rushing sound that rises between two railway trains when they pass each other in opposite directions and at great speed. " After a few hours we learned by observation that when we heard a shell sound overhead, it had already struck somewhere beyond us, which was comforting, and which is explained, of course, by the fact that the speed of the shell U so muchjsreater than the rate at which sound travels. We found the bullets much more disturbing. They moved under a cloak of invisibility. Their sound was like rustling silk, or like humming birds on a warm summer's day, or like the wind as it is imitated on the stago of a theatre. "