The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-12-03
ZONE OF DEATH
 ON BATTLEFIELD
 SCENE OF RUINS
Captured Trenches Held by ( French Marked by General
 DeSOIatiOn.

| ChaIons. France, Dec 3-''When we
 have taken you out before. we have shown you trenches.' said a French officer. This time we are going to
 show you a field of victory-lines of trenches which we took from the Ger l mans.''
 Not all the spoil had yet been re-
 moved from that section fifteen miles l long and from one to five in breadth | where, on Sept. 18th and 18th the l line of the Germans with the concen- traitor of infantry and the expend1- ture of a million shells.
 l What looked like a man of war tur-'
 ret on wheels was being drawn along i the road This cupo1a of riveted arm I or was dented by shell fragments. It I had an opening for the swing of a 1 small gun and door for the exit and
 entrance of the crew, which could be
 fastened by a bolt and a heavy chain. I Three men were found inside I locked in,''i said an officer. '"The tur- iret was set in the parapet of trench
 at an important point of the line. 1 All the German soldiers in the neigh borhood had either been killed or | buried alive We had to break the i lock to take the crew out All three I were alive but stunned. They had l gone on firing their guns as long as ! they could.''
 | Freely the corresp pondent moved be- l CW cen the OlQ line 2 T0ECu e1AA0 l. German trenches. which, for many l months, had been zone of death for ] whoever showed himself. In front 1 of the first line trench the Germans
 had barbed-wire entanglements five l or six feet broad. A rabbit could not { caught. In places now one had to
 search to find any wire It had been | chopped into bits by the burst of Z shrapnel bullets from the "soixante z Ir- [71I &o { the earth by high explosive shells
 Those guns had been firing from a
 range of anywhere from one thousand
 to five thousand yards, yet with such
 accuracy that they could hit this rib
 bon of wire six feet broad. On such. infantry in reaching the German trenches. There must be guns and
 shells enough to destroy wire over a
 front of fifteen miles, If the Ger
 mans in the trench with their rifles
 and machine guns and hand grenades
 could go on firing it meant murder
 for the Frenchmen exposed iq the 5 open as they charged. So fifteen or twenty yards beyond
 where the wire was being cut more isheI1-fire had to kill the fire from the I German trenches. Some blasts of shrapne1 bullets here, too, enough to kmake any man in the German trench
 es want to keep his head down if he | was not DuT1Gd or eV1ScSraC00 Qy u1Sn I explosive shells. For hundreds of wards in some places there was 1 scarcely any semlblance of trenches
 after the French guns had prepared the way for the French infantry. It | was as if the trenches had been dyn- l amfted systematically with charges ] plotted out checker-board fashion. At other places where. the destruc- ] ton had not been so complete it was 1 possible to see what the German trenches were like and with what 1 amazing thoroughness and care they had been built
 To a laynan they seemed impreg- 1 Iiab1e. Down these sian ting shafts under the parapets were caves twenty
 and thirty feet deep for refuge in a openings had been closed by the des- | cent of a ton or more of earth from l the parapet from the concussion of a large calibre howitzer shell, and all l the men within were buried alive. The fate of those who were in the trench itself was often to be buried .l in fragments of flesh and bone, blown into the soil by the explosions. The I German guns could not fire on the t French infantry as they reached the l barbed-wire for fear of hitting the Germans in the trenches ss and the 1 French fire stopped for fear of hitting l the French. Where an inferno of ex-7 hp1osions had ragged peace reigned over the wreckage wrought by French gun l nery, as the French soldiers sprang I over the remnants of parapets to face 1 with bayonet and dagger any Ger ] man that had survived and was in
 possession of his senses.
 ssEven those who were" said a sol
 dier, "often yielded. What would you? We swarmed around them. We ! summoned those alive out of their l dugouts. Thus we took our prison
 CTS. That is. we took those who were l alive The dead and the wounded. I An! Monsieur, they were more num- 'erous than the prisoners. It was ter I rible Monsieur and it all happened
 very fast, Monsieur. The blood was hot. We had waited many months.
 It was victory. How good the hough- 1 hough of the soixante quinze sounded
 behind us. How good the scream of
 our big shells! Then there were the
 mines we exploded Have you seen l the craters2 So big you could almost 1 put the Arc de Triomphe into one or
 them. We charged into a wall of
 smoke and dust from the shells and
 the smoke and dust were stilfs<thick when we reached the German trenches"
 And what did you think of when 1 you charged ?''
 "Of nothing, Monsieur, except to
 arrive. We ran fast as we could 1 The sooner got to those trenches
 the better-the less time the Germans
 had to recover from the shell-flre ana 1 begin firing at us.'
 Did you get as many Germans as | they got of you?"
 More. In the first line trenches many rnore''
 1 The question a score of times of
 officers and men always brought the
 same answer.
 l It was in the second and third lines
 of trenches that the French suffered
 most; for their guns could not ai-
 ways c11t-the barbed wire or blow the
 trenches to pieces so successfully far
 ther on as the troops swept forward [ throughout the greatest day in the | history of the war on the western
 front till night found them digging in ] to the earth under cover of the dark 1 v 1-.----.-.-a 41,oir old first