Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1915-09-01
WAR OF POSITIONS.
Trench Warfare Graphically De-
sCribed by Correspondent.
What 1t Means to Live for Weeks in
a Ditch Seeking to Kill Persons in
Another Ditch Within Hail
ing Distance.

LOndOn.-A British correspondent
at the front with the expeditionary
force in Flanders sends the following
graphic description of life in the
trenches:
This war, particularly this trench
warfare-'the war of positions as the
Germans more correctly call it's so
utterly unprecedented that one often
searches the mind in vain for some
suitable parallel which will make peo-
pie realize what it means to have to
live for days, sometimes for weeks, on
end in a narrow ditch seeking to com
pass the violent death of persons in
another ditch within hailing dis
lance with whom not year ago one
might have been lunching or dining.
Il was in some trenches the other
day. We were having tea round a
table in a dugout. The trench ran
through a cornheld, as l remember, and
as we drank our tea we had a fine
view of some ruined buildings against
She sky. The German trenches were
very close, and if you had a fancy to
finish with life all you had to do was
to take two steps from the tea table
and poke your head for an instant
above the sandbags of the parapet.
"On the German side an officer had
tried to do this that morning. Five
minutes afterwards three men with a
stretcheT had taken the body away.
Somebody remarked on the strange
ness of our position. Here we are
he said, in a ditch in a cornfield.
Rather a good spot for a picnic it
would have been, wouldn't it, with the
old farm back there to furnish hot wa
ter for tea and this nice view in front
of US? ! dare say people used to come
here on summer evenings like this a
year ago. Yet here we are, a lot of
men who probably never heard of
Flanders in their lives before this
war, living in an adjectival cornfield,
with only one idea in life, and that to
kill as many as possible of another
bunch of fellows living in another
;orner of the same old cornfeld.
Funny war, amt it? Who'll come and
snipe?
He and another man, having fin
ished their tea, went off down the
trench where the bullets were whin-
neying and popping and smoking great
wads out of the sandbags of the pa
radios with a resOunding smack that
fairly deafens you if your head hap
pens to be alongside l could see them
for a bit creeping doubled up along
stretch of low trench marked down as
bad corner. Later | caught sight of
them in a ruined barn. They were
kneeling motionless with their rifles
at an opening. They were waiting. |
knew whom they were waiting for.
gentle German whom they had named
Peter Weber, a sniper, whose perch
was in a tree. They had waited for
him for three days. They didn't get
Peter Weber that day.
Men who live like this, almost en-
tete-a-tete with the Germans, positive
~ get to know their enemies by sight.
They give the snipers names and one
hears of displays of frightfulness by
Karl and Fritz and of Hermann's eve
ming hate.
The other day l was in a position
which is less than thirty yards from
the German trenches, where the few
men holding the place squat doubled
up in a narrow trench with a stack of
bombs at hand to repel an attack. The
trench runs through some ruined