The Sentinel=record., 1914-11-04
PERMITTED FORTS
 ID DETERIORATE
PROTECTION ALONG BELGIAN BORDER HAD BEEN CON.
 sTRUCTEO CARELEsSLY
German Correspondent Describes the Detail of the Positions and Points to the Antiqueness of the Situation

The Hague. Nov D. Correspond
 ence of the Associated PressJ -Ac.
 cording 10 recent ports in the Ger
 man press not all the French fort- Hcauons are SO strong as has been believed. verdi of those which have been taken by the Germans are said 10 have been antiquatad, little effort Co modernize them having been spent on them. \ noteworthy example Of this. and one which is rather typical
 of what the Germans assert they have found, is the case of Fort Les Ay- yelles, which, located almost due south of Mezisres CharleyiLe, guard,
 ed the bridges and lords ot the Mouse in that locality
 Describing what he saw in the fort
 after it had been occupied by the Ger. mans, Henry Binder war correspou-
 dent of the Berliner Tageb att. says
 in the issue of that paper of October
 9 among other things.
 'tAll French forts along the Belgian
 border have been constructed with
 such carelessness that one can easily determine the degree to which the
 French depended upon their Belgian neighbor. Generally the forts were
 left in the state they had been built, and since tac pan of their construc-
 tion dates back to fifty years ago the stratesical weakness of several or
 most of them is plain enough
 "A typical eNamp of this is Fort
 Les Ayyilles which guarded the bridg es and lords of the Mouse south of
 Mezicrcs-Charleville, and which was shot out of the ground with 300 shots from our 2l centimetre mortars. The
 fort was built in lS1S and was armed
 with 40 pieces It's main armament
 We're two batteries of six guns each of 9-centimetre calibre dating from
 the years 1878 and 1880, and which
 had a range of only four kilometres.
 Cnote: the range of even the smallest German field pieces is never less than eight kilometres)
 'In addition there were found in the fort seyera l2centimetre bronze guns which had been cast in fNSi. while in the caaemates we found several mi trailltuses and five-barreued revolver guns which had been intended to
 sweep the meats In the fort were al
 so found several mortars from the year 1912 old muzzleloaders with tho typicai pyramids of round cannon balls beside them-guns of d type We
 use in our villages 10 fire sautes.
 The fort showed neglect every where Not alone was its armament antiquated and primitive. but the management before and during the at tack must have been defective. The
 road to the fort had been blocked merely by felled trees and an occa- sional barbod wire entauglemeut, and trees before one of the batteries of the forts made it necessary to replace it after our troops had arrived To do this a winch had to be used. But they succeeded only in getting one ot the pieces into position. This gun was intended to serve against aircraft above the fort, and an effort had been made to give it the necessary high aug.e elevation by digging trench around it in which the Timber rested.
 Even at that the eelation secured was insufficient
 "Our artillery bombarded the fort from northwesterly direction and worked with precision that would be hard to equal. One of the batteries
 in the fort had been put out of action by a bulps eye shot for each piece, and in other cases the barrel of the gun mad been torn from the carriage leaving a scrap heap of barrel. wheels. timber parts and masonry One of the barrels had dents four centme- tres deep where one of our she k had
 hit it,
 In this helpless cage a garrison of about 900 men had been stationed | It is understood that the men fled as soon as fire was opened by our artil- Ilery Instead of placing this force in Itrtnches they depended upon this poor position with the result that their defeat was complete both moral. ly and physically.
 There is the grave of a poor com mandent who witnessed the futile struggle and then saw his men utter " routed by a numerically superior enemy The poor man ended his ife. Simple German soldiers have bonored
 this deed by massive cross of wood upon which they painted in gold let terng the words
 Here rests the brave command
 ant. He found it impossible to sur
 vive the fall of the fort in his charge, k. |. P. With this simple cross of
 wood the German soldier honors in
 you tine hero who did his duty. Se-
 cond gandwehrPioneer Company, VIII A Qy Gaut.v,b. tQfts.u