The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-11-16
RAIN OF
 DEADLY MISSILES
 UPON THE GERMANS


 Chalons, France, Nov. 16-There was still wreckage enough remaining on the battlefield of Champagne three weeks after the battle was fought to give some idea of the havoc of de- struction when it was fresh after the advance. Within a space 5 miles in length by from one to three in breadth at least a million men were engaged on both sides; 25,000 prison CTS were taken, and at least two or three shells for every man engaged was fired.
 That sheet of preparatory shell fire which had. descended upon IS miles of German front trenches had meant a swath of slaughter to start with. For three days. night and day, this bonn bardnent continued. According to the accounts of German prisoners they could only hug the shelter of their subterranean chambers under their crumbIing arapets. A wall of artil- 1ery fire back of the trenches kept. the supplies from reaching them. In front of the trenches the continued crash of shrapne1 blasts was cutting the barbed wire. For months the French had been accommodating am intuition which they poured out from every calibre of gun.
 This shell fire not only killed and wounded Germans; not only made the most elaborate trenches into dust heaps but filtered the e> field with smashed German caissons, transport wagons, clothing, equipment and all the Nimpediments of an army. There was peace in the German trenehes for the first time in three days as the wave of French infantry rushed for the German trenches. Then the French guns stopped firing lest they kill their own men. The wave had not more than 200 yards to go. Estimate the time that it takes the average man to run that distance and you have the time it took the French soldiers to reach the wreckage which had been the German trenches and grapple with any survivors in the dugouts. In some places the wave swept on beyond the trench like the tide running up an in let The Germans between such forces in a pair of pfnnac1es. This account in patches. They were surrounded by infantry with no way of retreat open to them.
 ''Only the little things now remain said a French soldier who was sal vaging in the ruins of the German re- doubt of La Poche-''The Pocke%'-in the famous Trou Bricot sector s.At the start, of course, web uried the dead and gathered up the broken ma chine, guns which had been destroyed by our gunfire."
 The town of Ypres in the British lines probably remains the most col Iosal example of she1lfre. But Ypres was a town. It was not built to with stand she1lf1re, but as home for men in time of peace. In Trou Bricot the Germans with the Ncience and amaz- ing industry, which characterize their operations, had set out to build them selves a bastion which would with stand the kind of fire they had visited upon Ypres. They had been at work for many months perfecting it from time to. come, en1arging and strength ening it, busy as ants in a hill. It was a vast warren of sahdbags brist- ling with machine guns knuckle-1ike salient in the German front line. Small forests of barbed wire guarded it right and left It was as proof against shrapne1 as a slate roof against hail. The explosion of any high explosive shell was localized in one of a nul-> titude. of chambers built with view to receiving such visitors. Shafts in the earth underneath the whole of fered further protection. In the cen ter was sort of well in the midst of the walls of sandbags where the occu- pants might enjoy immunity from anything except bombs from the air.
 But the French guns showered~ tons upon tons of shells upon La Poche for those three days. When a cham Der was destroyed they gave the Ger mans no time to repair it. For 72 hours theb lasts of explosions were tearing at that redoubt-a hurricane of all the big ca1ibres from six to 15- inch with some smaller ones thrown in for good measure. Underneath La Foche the end of French mine rested a huge charge of explosive. That was fRed just before the in fantry charged. It carried Germans and sandbags heavenward in a cloud 200 or 300 feet. high and left a crater Of at least 100 feet in depth and 15O feet in width. Any Germans who survived were in the pail of dust from it the French infantry charged over the bare space where the barbed wire had been destroyed by guns work to do. In 10 minutes from the time that the French infantry left their trenches they were in full pos session of La Poche.
 ''It was easy, monsier," said sol dier, "easier than some much simpler fortifcations which we found later on where the shells had not fallen so thickly. We rushed in and we looked around-for somebody to fight with. But there was no one. For the most. part there was nothing but the frag- ments of men; and there were men 1y- ing about trying to apply first aid bandages and a few stunned, unhurt. What could they do but yield. Those who sought refuge down that shaft, l there, were all buried alive; and we dug out a few who still had the breath of life in them from that shaft yon- der.''
 From the highest point of the ruins l one looked right and left along the | front line of German trenches which | had been so elaborately dug and | were broken, half filled ditches as the l result of that terrific concentration of l gunfire; and the same thing was to be l seen in the region of Loos where the | British guns had wrought the same kind of havoc.
 JUST ARRIVED,