The weekly soliphone. (Paragould, Greene County, Ark.) 1907-1918, 1915-11-19
CARL W. ACKERMAN
DESCRIBES WILMA
Vivid Pen Picture of Death
Struggle Which Cost
Russians a City.
(By Carl w. Ackerman)


to New York. To-day is Sunday
and we have motored out to the
valley of Mejsza COLA, where the bat
tie for wilma was fought. Our way
lay through abandoned trenches and
barbed wire entanglements, dug or
stretched through cemeteries, cab
bage patches and potato fields.
Entering the ruins of Mejszagola
we obtained the first real view CT
the battlefield; and in it's center,
the dilapidated skeleton of what in
pace time was a church. 1t was all
so quiet! One could hardly realize
that from the second to the eleventh
of September, $4,000 of the Russian
guard and the German landstrum
were locked, in this 3-mile valley,
in a seething death struggle. 1t was
| but one of the terrible, decisive en-
gagements of this war, about which
the public has scarcely heard.
This battle was the beginning of
the fall of wilma, the first city the
car tried to save when he took
personal command of his army. Viii
ma was a beautiful modern city
about the size of Indianapolis ter
minal on the main rail line to Pet
rograd. The car entrenched $780,
600 troops about the city, including
three divisions of his personal guard.
Kovno had fallen and Hindenburg
was coming. September the ar
days the crash and roar of bedlam
reigned in the Russians hopeless
task of checking the Teutons' ad-
vance The night of the eleventh
1.-THE Germans stormed an entangle-
ment and the trench back of 1t
delivered heavy flank attacks aud
they were commanders of the whole
position, had 10000 prisoners and
sealed Vilna's fate.
We stopped before the church.
Ten PAGES brought us to an old
graveyard in which the storm Of
shells had plowed up the skeletons
of those long dead and scattered
them about, stark and white, like
an army of fallen ghosts lying N
the wake of battle, grinning at the
daylight. The green sod of the
surrounding fields was strewn with
I the remnants of shells which had
exploded in mid-air and rained their
devilish iron and fire on the strug-
Cling men The white church walls
were splashed with red.
We returned to the church. Peas
ants were silently passing in and
out We lifted our hats and tip
| toed inside The floor, save Tor
narrow passages to the altar, was
buried in straw. The roof was torn
to pieces and more than one shell
had exploded inside, for pictures,
statues of Christ, altar clothes, can
die sticks and benches were smash
ed and torn Before the unrecog-
nizable altar knelt woman and a
girl, heads bowed, sobbing. A big,
six-foot, fur-clad peasant came in
and knelt in the straw halfway
down the aisle An old woman who
| had been motionless beside the splin-
| tered pulpit, began crawling around
and around it. Save for the STAG
cato Tapping of a loose sheet of tin
on the steeple roof as the gusty
wind swept over it, this house OF
God and the battlefield about We're
silent.
We sauntered through the town,
past the black piles of burned
homes, and out into the Russian
trenches. These, dug slightly be-
low the crest of the hill, were ar
chitecturally so perfect that they
blended into the landscape 800 feet
away. These trenches commanded
the valley. across which, on the for
est's fringe, were the German
trenches. The green fields between
were peppered with the black spots
that artillery fire makes. We walk
ed the tops of the Russian trenches,
which are built of heavy logs and
cement blocks covered with five and
six layers of green sod. Once
looked down. A dead Russian star
ed up at me.
Scattered everywhere were caps
coats, shoes. food, bottles and per
4 sonal effects. Unused rifle ammu'
milton lay like seed sown on new
field. Here and there were Id
and 81 centimeter shells, uneXplod
|, ed, still hugging their death-dealine
power. Bits of white paper bear
!, ing firing line reports that hat
been telephoned to the artillery pc
sitions, scuttered crafty about th'
! desolate field in the breeze. Ev
| OIL oroVpS som,