Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-12-17
HARD SHELL FIRE
PRECEDED BATTLE
Enough Wreckage Still Litters
Field of Champagne to
Show Effects
TRENCHES DEATH TRAPS
Soldiers Forced to Burrow
Down While Explosions
Roared Around Them
TRENCHES DEATH TRAPS

! weeks after the battle was fought to
give some idea of the havoc of de-
struction when it was fresh after the
advance. Within a space fifteen miles
! in length by from one to three in
breadth at least a million men were
engaged on both sides; twenty-five
thousand prisoners were taken; and
at least two or three shells for every
man engaged was fired.
That sheet of preparatory shell fire
which had descended upon fifteen
miles OF German front trenches had
meant swath of slaughter to start
with. For three days, night and day,
| this bombardment continued. Accord
ing to the accounts of German prison
ers they could only hug the shelter of
| their subterranean chambers under
their crumbling parapets. A wall of
artillery fire back of the trenches
kept the supplies from reaching them.
In front of the trenches the continued
crash of shrapnel blasts was cutting
the barbed wire. For months the
French had been accommodating am
munition which they poured out from
every caliber of gun.
Smashed and Killed
This shell fire not only killed and
wounded Germans; not only made the
| most elaborate trenches into dust
heaps but Uttered the field with
smashed German caissons transport
wagons clothing equipment and all the
tmpediments of an army. There was
peace in the German trenches for the
first time in three days as the wave
of French infantry rushed for the
German trenches. Then the French
guns stopped firing lest they kill their
own men. The wave had not more
than two hundred years to go. Esti-
mate the time that it takes the ave-
rage man to run that distance and you
have the time it look the French SOL
diers to reach the wreckage which
had been the German trenches and
grapple with any survivors in the
dugoutS. In some places the wave
swept on beyond the trench like the
tide running up an inlet. The Ger
mans between such forces were caught
in pair of pincers. This accounted
for the prisoners who were taken in
batches. They were surrounded by
infantry with no way of retreat upon
to them.
"Only the little things now remain"
said a French soldier who was sal
vaging in the ruins of the German re-
doubt of La Poche-"The Pocket
in the famous Trou Bricot section.
"At the start, of course, we buried the
dead and gathered up the broken ma
chine guns which had been destroyed
by our gunfiring."
Yyres Is Example
The town of Ypres in the British
lines probably remains the most col
losal example of shell fire. But Yqres
was a town. 1t was not built to with
stand shell fire, but as home for men
in time of peace. In trou Bricot the
Germans with the science and amaz-
ing industry, which characterize their
operations, had set out to build them
selves a bastion which would with
stand the kind of fire they had visited
upon Tyres. They had been at work
for many months perfecting it from
| time to time, enlarging and strength
ening 1T, busy as ants in a hill. 1t was
a vast warren of sandbags bristling
with machine guns-a knuckle-like
salient in the German front line.
Small forests of barbed wire guarded
it right and left. 1t was as proof
against shrapnel as a slate roof
against hail. The explosion of any
high explosive shell was localized in
one of a multitude of chambers built
with q view to receiving such visitors.
Shafts in the earth underneath the
whole offered further protection. In
the center was sort of well in the
midst of the walls of sandbags where
the occupants might enjoy immunity
from anything except bomb from the
air.
Tore Big Hole
But the French guns showered tons
upon tons of shells upon La Poche
| for those three days When a cham
ber was destroyed they gave the Ger
mans no time to repair it. For sew
enty-two hours the blasts of eXplo-
sions were tearing at that dedoubt-
a hurricane of all the big calibers
from six to fifteen-inch with some
smaller ones thrown in for good meas
IRE. Underneath La Poche at the end
of a French mine rested huge charge
! of explosive. That was fired just be-
fore the infantry charged. 1t car
ried Germans and sandbags heaven
ward in a cloud two or three hundred
| feet high and left n crater of at least
one hundred feet in depth and one
hundred and fifty feet in width. Any
| Germans who survived were in the
pail of dust from it as the French
| infantry charged over the bare space
where the barbed wire had been de-
stroyed by guns which were given
this part Of the work to do. In ten
| minutes from the time that the
French infantry left their trenches
they were in full possession of La
| Poche.
ut was easy, monsieur" said a SOL
dier, "easer than some much simpler
fortifications which we fought later
on where the shells had not fallen so
thickly. We rushed in and we look
ed around-for somebody to fight
with. But there was no one. For the
most part there was nothing but the
| fragments of men; and there were
men lying about trying to apply first
aid bandages and a few stunned, un-
hurt. What could they do but yield.
Those who sought refuge down that
shaft, there, were all buried alive;
and we dug out a few who still had
the breath of life in them from that
shaft yonder"
From the highest point of the ruins
| one looked right and left along the
front line of German trenches which
| had been so elaborately dug and were
broken, half filed bitches as the re-
suit of that terrific concentration of
gunfire; and the same thing was to
be seen in the region of Loos where
the British guns had wrought the
same kind of havoc.
INK ERASING BLOTTER
Take an ordinary sheet of blotting
paper and steep it several times in a
solution of oxalic acid or oxlate potas-
sium and dry. While the ink spot is
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