The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1915-03-22

ANOTHER RAIDER STORY
"The Juaqler," = Dead Body Which
10 Used by the Men to Tell
When Welcome Day
light Comes.
[By Phil RAIDER. Written for the
United Press.]
copyright 1915 by the United
PraSa I


Press.l
LONDON. March 1.-The most pic
turesoue and weird hours of all the
life in trenches is the time between
sun set and the fall of darkness.
If the real picture were put on the
stage. it wouldn't be believed. AS
you sit and watch 1t yourself, you
feel that your eyes and mind are de-
ceiving you. AS the sun sinks and
grows red and the shadows grow long,
the gulch of the trench fills with early
night. 1t begins to grow cold and
the frost crystals form on the muddy
sides of the trenches, giving the ef-
feet Of tinsel or bits of bright stones.
The darkness OF the trench, is broken
now and then by the flare of a Gig
arctic, puffed nervously, or by the
flare of rifle.
Silhouetted against the red sky is
the erect figure of a legion soSi1er,
his glistening ibayonette protruding
above the trench walls and catchins 8
the dying glare of the suns light
Further along are the ugly shadows
of the machine guns, Frightened ny
the polished brass work.
AS the darkness grows deeper you
catch a glimpse of sharp pin point
of light on distant hill, which flick
ers, in the Morse code. message
from a French battery to its comrades
many miles distant. They are talk
ing of some new plot to kill human
beings. There is a rattle or rifles,
and their quick flashes. first at one
point in your trench and then In an
other. 'ro1a afar comes the putt!
putt, putt! of Maxim gun. Night
fall is the machine guns hour. Dur
ing the hours of daylight, the machine
gun men have got their ranges and
fixed their aims and now in the dark
ness, when their precious guns are
safest from sharp shooters. they flare
out the result of the days work.
From distant corners of the COM
pass, comes the roar of deep throated
batteries.
The stars seem all the brighter, be-
cause you are gazing at them from
the bottom of your black trench.
Suddenly the sky is bi-sected by an
arc of sparks, terminated by beau
tiful glare of pure white light, which
transforms night into day for the
space of many seconds. 1t is night
light sent up by the enemy so that
they can see what they are doing;
we might possibly, they think, be out
OF our trenches, with our bayonetts
fixed charging on them through the
darkness After the white light fad
es, the night seems darker then ever.
The bullets whistle and shrek
overhead almost instantly, and all the
night it will be like this, noises and
lights, noises and lights. The night
is filed with danger and surprises.
Daylight charges were never made; It
was in the night time, in the smallest,
wierdest hours, that either the Ger
mans left their trenches or we left
ours. to run ahead into a hand-to-
hand stabbing affray with the enemy.
The gray of morning Is sight OF
good cheer. In our trench we measur-
ed the morning light by whether or
not we could see the legs Of "the jug
gler" fluttering in the wind.
THE iuggler" was the corpse OF a
Frenchman which for six weeks lay
some two hundred feet in front Of our
trenches, lying on his back. with his
arms out-stretched, canvass water
bucket clutched in each hand. his
legs sticking up into the air, in a spot
so deadly from rifle fire that no one
could reach him. The dead man lay
there through the nights and days.
The French called this grotesque
heap sthe jugglel' because they rem
embered that Japanese athletes
stretched themselves out in this dead
Frenchman's posture and tossed
things about IN the air with their feet.
When the rags on the legs OF the
"juggler" were plainly seen then we
knew that morning had come, another
night of madness had passed. and we
might sleep until the night lights
and the night noises broke out again
at SUN set.