East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1915-04-29

Press staff Correspondent
copyrighted, 1915, by the United
Press. Copyright in Great Brit
aiu)
WITH THE BRITISH ARMY IN
NORTHERN FRANCE, April 16.-
(By Mail to New York "A mile
back from Neuve Chapelle we got out
of our automobile. on our left was
farmhouse with the roof blown off,
on our right a wayside shrine, the
floor covered with straw, on which
soldiers sleep at the foot Of the altar
An English colonel takes the three
OF us In tow.
Wen go in twos, he said. Keep
your distance apart They never shell
a couple Of men, but If they see four
Of US together they might try to drop
a shell on us"
We plunge along through the mud
OF the road.
They shelled this building we are
Passing half an hour ago." exclalms
the colonel. The building in question
has been shelled daily for many days;
It's roof is almost gone / hear "A
man whistling in the building
That's the cook" said the colonel.
He's going into the kitchen where
there's a sink to wash his dishes.
Sure enough, there stood the cook
in khaki; you can see him through a
shellhole in the brick wall. He is
working and whistllng the English
Tommy's latest tune, Goodbye Dol
~. Must Leave You"
Flowers Amid the Ruins.
We pass three ruined farms. In
the yard OF one. hyacinths are bloom
ing at the doorway of the roofless
house
Now over across this farm" says
the colonel. and we turn off the road
and follow broad, beaten path
This path is going to be written down
In history sometime Ii was beaten
down by the feet Of the British sol
diers who marched to the trenches
that night of March 9, and waited un-
I'll the signal was given in the morn
ing TO rush the trenches that spread
before the village of Neuve Chapelle,
Frederick Villiers who has drawn
sketches in sixteen wars and is now
on his seventeenth, stops to make
sketch. III you don't mind" says
the colonel quietly 1--WE won't stop
here. There's a house ahead of us
there and we can stop behind that
why, are the Germans near here p"
says Villiers.
They're right over there" says
the officer. But he doesn't hurry us
on. He's used to It, but it's hard to
follow his conversation. He asks
why the American military attaches
were withdrawn from Germany Il
have him to repeat his question. /
can't keep my eyes off the trees a
mile away. and it's hard to keep my
mind on American military attaches
md those problems. That house
ahead will hide us from the trees
and there's nothing to keep US from
running for 1t. except that the colonel |
is chatting very coolly and striding
along at an ordinary gait
Cat't Tell a Battlefield.
The trouble about this war is that
you never know You are on battle |
field until someone who knows about !
it. tells you So The English artillery I!
is booming behind us, the shells drill
their long, hollow, echoing tunnels
through the air. But in all the flat
land around us. broken only now and
then by the wrecks Of shelled houses
there is not a sign of human life ex-
cept ourselves. You are not afraid
OF the English guns behind you, and
there is not the slightest sign ahead
of you, just now, that indicates dan
ger 1t takes a guide like the col
onel whose daily pathway to the
trenches lies along this route, to tell
you all about it. He knows the road
the elumps Of bushes beside It, the ir-
rigation bitches. the hollows, the few
trees. like commuter knows his way
to work in the morning.
We reach the shelter of the house
and while Villiers does his sketch the
colonel says;
"Thats a rather bad stretch across
there. | lose man every now and
then from bullets that fly over the
embankments of our trenches. It's
worse along toward evening than 1t
is now because then the Germans
can't pick our trench line so well in
the gloom and many Of their shots go
wild at dusk"
We start off down a road. We
come to a portal; huge pillars of
sand bags form gateway and walls
of sandbags stretch to the right and
left of the road We pass through
this gateway On our right we see
that the pile of sand bags shifts and
runs parallel with the roadway. Sol !
diers are sitting at the foot of the
bag walls, some reading, others cook
ing or fussing around little charcoal
stoves.
In the Trenches.
We turn and walk over towards
them across a green, sunllt clearing
as big as an ordinary frontyard. We
follow along in the side of the big
wall Suddenly we notice that we are
walking in ditch, clothes hang
from the earth wallis here and there, !
a shoe sticks out from beneath a
cloth, you trip over It, you discover
1t isn't an empty shoe, it is jerked
out of sight you heard q grunt from
beneath the cloth, you've discovered I