Semi-weekly herald., 1915-03-25
HORRORS OF TRENCH
LIFE ARE UNBELIEVABLE
by Philip Rader.l
copyrighted 1915 by United Press

NerHaH Douy hanging from the
barbed wire entanglements in front
Of the French trenches, which | have
just left. For two months this body
was part of my little outlook on the
world.
There's pair of nippers in the
rotting hands. For some weeks the
back was arched upward, but recent
ly it has begun to sag. The clothes
flap more and more wildly each day
as the body slowly shrivels. Nobody
from either side has been able to get
to that body to bury it. 1t is buried
there in the air on the barbed wire,
and it will be gradually shot away.
Living cheek to jowl with dead
men; that's the thing that turns you
to beast, but it's a part of trench
life that is unavoidable. The first
thing that shocks you in the trenches
is to discover that, after time, you
are able to watch men writhing in
pain with perfect equamity. My first
experience in this happened one day
when a young Englishman, in my
squad, named Samuels, tried to take
short cut to the rear, and, instead
of following the maze of trenches, got
out into the open right in front of
our trench. A German bullet passed
through his lungs, and we saw him
topple only fifteen feet away from
US. We writhed and moaned, but our
officers wouldn't let us try to get him.
| The Germans didn't shoot at him any
more, because they knew they had
LANDED" him. Our lieutenants sent
to another part of the trenches for a
Red Cross man, who came, after
about an hour. This Red Cross docto r
was young Swiss named Scherr.
He climbed right out of the trench
and started toward the writhing fig
ure of Samuels, but bullet passed
| through his head, and, after Hopping
about minute or two, Scherr's body
stiffened, and we could see he was
dead. This was O'Clock in the after
noon. Whenever we tried to get out
to help Samuels, the Germans turned
terrific fire our way, and though
we could even hear Samuels' groan-
ing, we couldn't get to him. 1t was
not until dark that we could do any
thing. Then Victor Chapman, of New
York, a Harvard man, who was
studing architecture in Paris when
t.. 80. b-oAe M r7ade a lasso with
a piece of rope, and before long, he
had dragged both bodies into the
trench. Samuels was dead.
Experiences like this hardened us
and finally we got to the place where,
if a man was killed or wounded, he
was blamed for carelessness. When
Visconcellos, merchant of Paris,
was killed with rifle bullet through
the head, while he was peeping about
the trench, Lieutenant Francis, who
conducted the funeral ceremony, said
to us, as we stood over the grave:
"This is lesson for you young
men to take to heart. You must not
be careless"
Think that as part of a funeral
service.
Most of the divisions of infantry
men who spent five-day watches in
the trenches, during the forty-seven
| cnpsacutiva Jav, that ,v,s thou
with the machine gun squad, buried
their dead right in the trenches.
Some times they scooped out a
grave in the side of the trench. Or
some times they would dig a grave in
the floor of the trench. They would
not know, of course, where other d.
visions had buried THEIR dead, so
it was no uncommon thing to come
across rotting body. Then that part
of the trench would be polluted for
days until the rain had washed away
the last traces of the unspeakable
mess.
There you are, among the dead. No
cave man ever lived so terribly as
you do; at least he buried his dead
! at distant point moved away from
the grave, but we We're prisoners
with our dead, sleeping, as it were,
alongside them, as much prisoners
as they. You get to feel that the
only difference between yourself and
dead man is that your little bullet
hasn't found you yet
Looking death in the face in this
way, strange custom rose up
among men in the trenches. There
was little Greek in our trench who
was a fatalist. He used to say: 81
know I'll get it some of these days
when my time comes" Now the min
ute you hear a soldier talking that