The Bemidji daily pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Minn.) 1904-1971, 1915-03-26
GERMANS HIDE in
SUGAR BEET SACKS.
ANDSPY 0NfRENcH'
Beet Coat" One of Wars Cleverest
Inventions-Leaves Assisted in
Completing Disguise.
DRESSED LIKE GR1D1RoN HERO
Bombs Thrown From One Trench to-
Another Like Base Balls-Mathew-
son Would Be Medal Winner.
BY PHIL RAIDER.

BY PHIL RAIDER.
Copyright, 1915, by United Press.
London, March 1.-What Christy
Mathewson could do to the Germans
near our trenches!
The Germans are masters of new
tricks, or Of adapting old tricks to
new purposes, but their grenade
stunt would put them at the mercy
of the great American ball players.
The hand grenades are about the
size of baseball and weight only a
few ounces more. It has four little
buttons on it, which must strike
with blow of four our five pounds
in order to cause an explosion, so a
man can handle it in his hands with
perfect safety. I watched the Ger
mans throw the grenades like school
girls or Greek boys pitching nickels
at crack and all we Americans
would laugh at the ineff1ciency of
the bombs in such unframed hands.
Wear Out Trenches.
We were considered the best bomb
throwers of all, because we pitched
them with force. A trained pitcher
could have worked havoc with them
He could have kept battering at a
trench-and the German line was
only As feet away from ours, until
he had worn out the trench with re-
peated explosions.
Eugene Smith, who sold his butch
er shop in Pawtucket to come and
fight the Germans, because they had
destroyed his birthplace in Birming-
ham, saved or lives the other day
by catching one Of these bombs, as
though it were baseball. He threw
it back and it exploded in one of the
German trenches.
There was a huge Swede in my
section who swung the. butt end Of
his rife at one of these bombs one
day and hit it. There was a terrific
explosion and he was found Drained.
Why he did such a foolish thing I
do not know. -
Play Foolish Tricks.
A mans nerves plays him foolish
tricks in the trenches and you find
yourself tempted to do strange things
just as some persons find themselves
tempted to jump from high places.
I suppose the Swede had been temp
ted time and again to stop bomb
with his rifle and finally the tempta-
tion became too strong.
The Germans had another trick
that reminded me Of the American
game of football. Now and then u
few of them would Chamber out of
the trenches under terrific fire to
cut the barbed wire entanglements.
They were armored from head to
foot. They were. gruesome looking
objects, but they reminded me for
all the world like football players.
We never killed any of these men,
but we hit them in the legs. 1t see1os
their shin guards were not as strong
as the rest Of the other armor.
Had Deadly Effect.
Another invention of the Germans
was swivel with which the Ger
mans swung their rifles. Each man
would fix his aim at a certain spot
of our trenches and when he was
ordered to fire he could reach up and
pull the trigger without exposing
his head 1t was merely artillery
practice applied to rifles, and it had
a deadly effect. The white night
lights which were shot into the air
and then lowered over the trenches,
were shot up at first only by the
Germans, but it was not long before
we had them too.
Clever Invention.
The wonderful French gun known
as the soixante quinze fires twenty
80 shells a minute. The recoil is
caught in cylinders filled with glyc-
crime; The gun loads itself auto
matically and it never loses it's aim.
And on our part of the line all the
new inventions which the Germans
developed could not overcome the
great advantage which the French
held on account of the Soixante
quinze gun. In it's way the gun is as
marvellous and revolutionary as the
great 42-centimeter guns of the Ger
mans. .
The "beet coat" as we called it,
was one of the cleverest German in
ventions that we saw in our part OF
the line. All of the country around
us and the fields in which our tren-
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