The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-10-03
From London Ideas.

oay on the Aisne. I found him In
 French hospital and he was glad to
 have someone to whom he could talk
 to talk about his wound that he want
 ed. for the ordinary private. plunged
 suddenly and simultaneously as he has
 been not only into the terrible novelty of war but also into the entirely un- imagined and unexpected surroundings of a foreign country. Is so bewildered by the flood of new impressions that has swept in upon his mind that he can
 usually give a clear account of only one of them and that the one that has
 been emphasized and impressed upon
 kim by sharp physician pain-the story
 of how he got his wound.
 But this man had someting else en- graved upon his brain that he wanted to share by way of speech with soma- one who could understand him: |. was as if the horror of it was too great for him to keep to himself. and l do not think 1t was imagination tha. made me think I saw a look of relief i'll his eyes as he finished telling me the story. The vision that obsesscd him had been the incident of second os time. but, as he told me In his rough speech, the remembrance of it will be with him throughout all the life that lies before him.
 The cause of 1t all had been one of those huge 90-pound lyddite shells that he German artillery has been using with such terrible effect especially in
 this battle of the Marne. They tear a hole in the ground that you could bury horse in." and they number their victims. when they fall near troops in anything like close forma- tion. not by units but in tens.
 There were four of them xouavc chaps just ahead of us," said this Scots guardsman from Lancashire, "an' ono O them shells Just coon along an ex- pIoded where they were An, by goom 1t just lifted them all four oop Into tn air. 1t did. A saw them go oop. anu A poot me and over me eyes. They
 went oop all in pieces. legs and heads
 and arms flyin'. except one, an he
 looked like doll with Is legs air
 arms straight out an Is fingers claw
 In and the wind of 1t blowin' out Is
 trousers. Some of our chaps laughed,
 it looked that odd like. but A couldn't
 face 1t. A just covered me ayes. A
 saw them go oop, but A couldn't look
 at them coon down."
 Nights in the water soaked trenchEs, the deadly cold dawns. when the wear fed. haff-waked troops must stand to. arms" for that Is the hour which the enemy often choose for A surprise at tack. the hunger that a cup of half cold tea, hard biscuit. and a piece of uncooked bacon can do little to appease --the remembrance of these had faded from his recollection beside the vivid memory of that instantaneous destruc- ton and dismemberment of men whom he had seen living and moving close in front of him an instant before.
 And in the next bed was another who
 had, too, one paramount impression that he had brought more clearly than any other out of the inferno from which they both had come. Ii was the strange sight of a British Maxim gun deliberately saving wall of brick in half. At short range the gun had opened upon a party of Germans who rushed for cover behind the only ob
 stacle at hand. an ordinary red brick
 wall. There they no doubt thought they were safe. but the English ma-
 chine gunners had another device In reserve for their destruction. They de-
 liberately opened fire on the wall H.
 self, raising and depressing the mug
 gle of their gun in the same line uh-
 til the hail of bullets had smashed
 hole right through1t Then they began
 to move the gun sideways to and fro
 along the wan until they had cut through it in that direction too And then the wall fell down and the Ger mans behind 1t had to run backward to escape the falling bricks. As they went the pitiless Maxim moved them down, devouring the prey which it had eaten It's way through the solid tricks and mortar to win.
 They are countless-these little nnec- dotes brought by those who come back. from the field. So vast is the battle that each individual fighter. of what ever rank he be. sees often no more than 20 human beings throughout the
 whole lonely day in which death goes flying past him on every side. And thus 1t is that each can relate usually TO
 more than one little incident that ae has personally sccn and the recollec-
 ton of which Is the fresher upon him for its isolation.
 There was a story told me yester-
 day by an officer of gunners about
 battery of theirs which had annihilated
 a battery of the enemy by the slxilfuI
 Use they made of what was no more
 than an almost trivial fluke. For four days the British position had been born- tarded day and night by a battery of German guns of a type which they lave nicknamed Silent Mary" because they make such Q noise. The battery
 was admirably concealed in thick woods, and though the British guns had ranged to and fro end far and near all these days they seemed never to have succeeded in getting near to it, for still the German fire went on with deadly and monotonous regular ity. But one night captain of the English battery happened to notice far away among the trees that mask ed the enemy's position q distRnt flash. It was there only for a fraction of second. but 1t was followed by the well known screaming of a German she'll Beyond all doubt he had had the fc.- tune to sec the flame of one Of tke hidden guns. He took his prisinatip compass and took careful bearing of the flash. Then he moved to another point farther down the British lines and waited patiently with his eyes fixed on the spot from which the fla&t had como before. It was not long be. fore his vigilance brought its reward. once moro the tiny point of fire. scarcely noticeable except to keen and watchfui eye, f1ickared amid the shadows of the tree-eov9red hills three miIes away. Ouco dEoiu tho officer