JUST WAITING FOR DEATH.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15132, 29 January 1917, Page 4

JUST WAITING FOR DEATH.

DESPAIRING LETTERS FROM GERMAN TRENCHES. ‘"IP WE HAD ENGLISH AIRMEN AND GUNNERS!” , BRITISH HEADQUARTERS-IN THE FIELD, FRANCE, November 24. Dearest Wilhelm,—l send you good wishes from my grave in the earth. Soon we shall bepome mad if this fright, ful artillery fire does not cease. Night and day it lias never been like this be. fore, they say. Under the earth, all day, we ait,'having neither Jight nor sun. shine, but just waiting for death. Aliy minute may bring it. 1 should not v write to you like this, dear Wilhelm, but I cannot help it. Again the dreadful at-' tack is beginning. Shall I ever see you again, God knows. - Oh, it is too horrible. A German soldier wrote that letter, and it was found by our troops. He is . (or was) a member of the 66th Regiment of Foot, and he wrote it from his dug* out in the German trenches on this span of the Somme battlefield. Day after day of ceaseless British shell-fire, night after night of remorseless attack, had proved too much. Yet the letter, though perhaps more graphically written, is no more heart, broken than many another message that is finding its way now from the Somma battlefield towards the inner heart of Germany. The true tale of the Somme is reaching Germany. There is no doubt of that. The following is from a man of thd Morser battalion in the trenches: “So you are coming to Cambrai. J should never have expected that yott were coming so near me. I am convinced that'we shall soon meet here, for your real destination is probably here also, and that is—to your death. Thousands are gone and buried already. Anything like what goes on here has 'not happened in this war. I must tell you that. But if fate decrees that you should come here you will see for yourself.” ' ' DEATH WARRANT. >■ It is getting clearer that the German soldiery are beginning to look upon order, to proceed to the Somme as being equivalent to a death warrant. , Something of what the Germans go through every time they are driven out of their positions by the British attacks is shown by the following letter from a man of the 11th Infantry Reserve:— “The English attack regularly every day. For the first few days we had to live without cover in tlie trenches till we had made the needfu) holes for ourselves. The risk wae'appaling. We hqd losses as heavy again as those we had at Frkourt. One single British shell gave us 16 dead and several others wounded. In the front lines it was ghastly. Every day we had at least an hour or two of the fiercest bombardment, and the fire from individual guns never ceases. “You can imagine the experiences the men go through. There is not even a trench in the foremost lines. They Jiia in shell holes. The dug-outs we haye been forced to make to get a bit of cover do not fare any better. Some are knocked in by shell fire before they are ready. The trenches are constantly under fire, for in the traverses there, are guns in, position which, when they &, are ■ noticed by airmen. We are slowly go* ing back.”

OFFICER’S CONFESSION. In case it should be imagined thai these mournful letters are the outpourings of mere simple German privates, ' note the following candid confession written by an officer (lieutenant) of tha J7oth Regiment: “You in Champagne are no longer in the witches’ cauldron on the brim of which we are sitting—always awaiting the moment to fall in in from one side or the other . It is turmoil here again; The air has been alive with, aviators in the past few days, and still more so with the heayy shells that have been flying over us and on to our poor comrades on. Our flank and on to our batteries. "The number of guns—and of the heaviest calibre—which the English now possesses is uncanny, ard the amount of ammunition they fire off is fabulous. In addition—what makes it so bad—their airmen are constantly over our lir.es. They point out our batteries so that they may he peppered, and are always attacking our captive balloons, which is the same as putting our eyes out. Meanwhile the air is black with their aircraft, whereas our airmen—but of that why speak. It would be merely pouring water into the Rhine. _We oould save many thousands of lives if we had the English airmen and gunners. It makes me despair when I think of ft all ” SLOW SUICIDE.

The following is a letter from a soldier in a unit not stated; "Dear Ewald.—You will wonder a* this letter. I cannot properly explain to you. If you think it is nonsense, burn it Perhaps it is due to a proaentiburn it. If I tell you it is the end,excuse me. No one can understand who does not know this field of battle. Of those out here in this field and on other fronts a very small number will ever see their homes again. And your year class is not . the last that will fall victims to this murder begun by a higher power. “It is decreed by this higher power that we shall be completely annihilated. I say we. not Germany. The sooner we acquiesce the sooner will the end come, for the end will surely come. Since we shrink from confessing this, it will be all the longer, and after all it has been merely slow suicide.”'

The letters I have quoted, which M» mere samples of many, show that “confession” his at least begun ‘We shall be completely annihilated.” This the German soldier ip. the forefront of battle is beginning to realise. It w full Of significance, this writing from the field of battle. But such writing must not lead one tod far. These men are tasting defeat in all its bitterness. But many , more Germans have yet to taste it;