Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-03-20
TRENCHES AT FRONT
LIKE DIRTY AND COLD
UNDERGROUND CITY
Soldiers on Fighting Line
Constantly Face Deadly
Peril and Are Compelled
to Endure Greatest OF
Discomforts.
BY PHIL RAIDER
Cnpyrleht. 1915. by the United Press.
AMMAN Nh rnh 1

Copyrlght 1915. by the United Press.
LONDON, March 1,
How does II feel to live in the trenches?
Here's a little recipe by which you
can find out Take a cold, damp cellar,
flood It with some three to six inches
of almost ice-cold mud. At a height of
five feet from the floor stretch tangle
of wires, turn an electric current into
the wires and let the voltage be SO
! heavy that every wire will be as deadly
as third rail. Now blow out the light,
crawl to the middle of the floor in the
darkness and stand erect, trusting to
blind luck that your head won't touch
the wire.
These charged wires. in the darkness,
represent the invisible deadly trails OF
! the bullets that fly over your head in
| the trenches. or course, If you want to
| be safe in the cellar. you can keep your
head down; but If you did that In the
| trenches you would be neglecting your
! duty. II Is your duty, for instance, to
| fire eight bullets an hour If you are
on guard. Watchful eyes of officers will
| discover whether you are shooting into
! the air or whether you are firing with
! your aim fixed on the enemy's trenches,
and a good sentinel is supposed to raise
| MS Hebu HDONe tne trench every W MN
utes to see what is going on outside.
PHILOSOPHER MISSES GUESS.
Victor Chapman, a Harvard graduate,
who was with me in the trenches, was
| something of a philosopher and he used
to say, The danger OF being shot is very
small. The trail of a bullet is very small,
! the space around you. as compared with
the trail Of a bullet, is as one million to
| one, so the chances of being hit are in
! that same proportion"
But 1t didn't work out with Chapman
at all. He was hit the very first day in
| the arm.
The trenches are an underground city
| filled with unspeakably dirty citizens.
| They are in tangle of sunlten streets,
| the houses are holes in the earth and
| the streets, in my district, converged in
one place which Americans called Long
| acre Square into very exclusive tri-
| angle where all the officers lived. There
| are street signs. too. telling how to reach
| this or that officers hole in the ground.
| and now and then there are danger signs.
| warning the passerby to keep his head
| low. 1t was a two-mile journey through
| the trenches from our front to the rear
trench, and on this journey one would
| meet and pass many men. The soldiers
| always speak to each other at such
meetings Just as two men pass the time
| of day on a country road The lieutenant
| is virtually the Mayor of this underground
| city, the sergeants might be likened to
| policemen
There is trading under way, too. To-
| bacco Is the money and the storeSeeper is
| the chap who, at any certain time, has
more of some one thing than he wants,
| less of another than he needs, so that
| every man is a village keeper at one
time or another
DO you want to go 10 a music hall?
There's sure to be certain dugout some
where in the trenches where musical men
gather. In our trench George Ullard
| Negro from Galveston, Tex, played Won
| derfully on a banjo with one string, and
| in our mud hut there was the music of
mouth organs, an accordion and Ullard's
banjo every night. The German trench
was only a. feet away from us at this
point, and they used to listen to us every
! evening and cheer us.
TRENCH TOWN KEEPS BUSY.
There are many little tasks with which
the citizens of the trench town busy them
selves. You'll see a man cleaning his
rifle, another will be refooring his hut
with straw, another will be rigging bot
tie on stock for the Germans to shoot
at, two or three may be preparing a
dummy figure for a German target an
other may he marking his initials in the
side of the trench by sticking his empty
cartridge shells into the earth. There are
artists. too, in this strange colony AL
most every day there was wooden tomb
stone or two to prepare. II was my duty
to decorate the tombstones with some
sort of design, and Belgian named Dur
mine always did the lettering. You might
find us almost any forenoon working
| away with a ledhot poker burning names
and decorations on u wooden cross which
we had constructed out of any pieces of
wood we could find.
There were three Americans In my
| machine-gun squad of l6 men: Eugene
Jacobs, who stll owns butcher shop
In Pawtucket, r. l.: Dr. Chapman, OF
New York. and myself. and on Thanks
giving Day we arranged feast in our
hut. Jose A1nes, an Argentinlan. heard
that we had picked up some stray chick
ems and had shot "A goose. and that
Jacobs was cooking them for some sort
Of a banquet, and he invited himself,
saving, "I know what Thanksgiving
Day is and I'm South American, so |
think | ought to come"
The other l2 men In the squad didn't
know what Thanksgiving Day was but
they knew chickens when they smelled
them. so we invited them all The chick
en- was served out OF a huge magnificent
old china bowl, which we had found in
the deserted house of the Mayor of q
small town near by. Chapman, who
knows antiques when he sees them, said
the bowl was at least 800 years old and
that he was going TO take 1t home with
him when he left the trenches, but one
day, when we permitted fve infantry
men of a newly arrived division TO sleep
in our hut a shell struck the roof, broke
the bowl and killed five men. We left the
men and bowl buried In the caved-in hut
and built new house.