Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1914-10-20

Then sounds more hideous than the
fight of projectiles broke about them
with the abruptness of lightnings held
in the hollow of the Almighty's hand
and suddenly released. The Browns
guns had opened fire. Explosions were
even swifter III sequence. than tie
flashes that revealed the stark faces.
Dust and stones and flying fragments
of flesh filled the air. Men went down
in positive paralysis Of faculties by the
terrific crashes. Sections of the ram
were blown to pieces by the burst OF
a shrapnel shoulder high; other Sec
tions were lifted heavenward by Q
shell burst in the earth.
Peterkin fell with a piece of Jagged
steel embedded in his brain. He had
gone from the quick to the dead 80
swiftly that he never knew that his
charm had failed. The same explosion
got Fracasse, sword in hand, and an
other buried him where he lay. The
bankers son went little farther; the
barber's son still farther Men who
we're alive hardly realized life, 80
mixed were life and death. Internal
imagination goes faint; It's widest
SMILES grow feeble and banal before
such a consummation of hell. :
But the tide keeps on; the torn gaps
of the ram are filed by the rushing
legs from the rear. Officers urge and
lead Such are the orders; such is
the duty prescribed; such is human
bravery even in these days when life
Is sweeter to more men in the joys Of
mind and body than ever before. Pre-
cision, organization, solidarity in this
charge such as the days of the death
or-glory" boys never knew! Over the
bodies of Peterkin and the BARRIERS
and the bankers sons, plunging
through shell craters, stumbling, stag
gerlng, cut by swaths and torn by
eddies of red destruction in their
ranks, the tide proceeded, until Its
hosts were oftener treading on flesh
than on soil. And all they knew was
TO keep on--keep on, bayonet in hand,
till they reached the redoubt, and there
they were to stay, alive or dead.
After hell, more hell, and then still
more HE'LL" was the way that Stransky
expressed his thought when the en-
gineers had taken the place Of the SD
of the Browns in the redoubt. They
put their mines and connections deep
enough not to be disturbed by shell
fire. After the survivors in the van of
the Grays' charge, spent of breath,
reached their goal and threw them
selves down, the earth under them, as
the mine exploded, split and heaved
heavenward. But those in the rear.
slapped in the face by the concussion,
kept on, driven by the pressure of the
mass at their backs, and. in turn,
plunged forward on their stomachs In
the seams and burrows of the mines
havoc. The mass thickened as the flood
of bodies and legs banked up, in keep
ing with Westerling's plan to have
enough to hold"
Now the automatics and the rifles
from the redoubt to which the Browns
had fallen back opened fire. So
close together were these bullet-ma.
chimes that the orbit of each ones
swing made a spray of only a few
yards breadth over the redoubt, where
the Browns gun-fire had not for a mo-
ment ceased its persistent shelling,
with increasingly large and solid tar
gets of flesh for their practice. The
thing for these targets to do, they
knew, was to intrench and begin to
return the infantry and automatics
fire. Desperately, with the last effort
of courage, they rose in the attempt
rose into playing hose streams of bull
let's whose close hiss was a steady un-
dertone between she'll bursts. In the
garish, jumping light brave officers
impulsively stood up to hearten their
commands in their work, and dropped
with half-uttered urgings, threats, and
oaths on their H.
To be Continued