The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1916-03-26
The Great Slaughter Now Going on at
Verdun 10 More Terrible Than
the Earlier
FishtA
KILLED BY THOUSANDS
onrushing Soldiers 50 Close Together
That the Dead Stand Up
right on tho
Field.

| StdH Correspondence
! LONDON, March 14-(By mail)-
Our quick firing guns. posted only
| five yards apart, belched forth and
we were confronted with the sight
of corpses standing upright In
lunches"
This extract from the narrative of
a soldier who witnessed portion of
the German attempt to take the
French positions before Verdun, Is re-
garded here today as mild in COM
parison to the narratives that Will be
told to the world before the end of
the present summer.
The German attempt on Verdun Is
regarded among close war stuuents as
the final chapter of b1oodletting I'M
paraIleled in history. Every indica-
tion suggests that the stalemate of
the trenches is coming to an end.
Hundreds of thousands of men have
been on almost endless duty under
ground for months.
Every device known to military
usage has been employed to make
these underground fortresses more
impregnable. Death splitting machine
guns have been set more closely to-
gether on both sides; more artillery
have been massed in the rear ready
to pump death in the enemy's ranks
the moment he leaves his trench for
an assault.
Generals, sitting in war council
have pondered over some plan TO
break the endless inactivity and
launch a smash on the enemy that
will draw the war nearer to close.
To let matters remain a trench stale
mate lengthens the war indefinitely.
The Germans took the initiative at
Verdun.
What military experts predicted
would happen, happened. The French
lines assaulted by the Germans fell
back somewhat, but not before the
ground in front resembled a solid
carpet of corpses. French ''75's
(three inch quick firing cannon) roar
ed and machine guns ratified. The
second line of Teutons came fear
lessly on, mounting over their fallen
comrades, to fall in hundreds or to
be killed so fast that they stood erect
in gruesome groups.
On some parts Of the line fronting
Verdun the third line Of Germans fol-
lowed the second. Hundreds more
were Sian, but these who withstood
the fire spilled over into the French
lines. Desperate hand-to-hand battling
ensued. Somewhere the GeramRs re-
NAMED and somewhere else they
were driven out
At some points the fighting border
ed on the banks of the river Meuse,
whose current ultimately carried
bodies, French and German alike,
downstream by hundreds into more
peaceful localities. At Dinant, Bel
GUM, German troops flshed the bodies
out and gave them burial.
The only battle in modern Euro
pean history that compares favorably
with verdun was the equally tndecis-
i've battle at Ma1plaquet, where Mar
shall VilIars, at the cost of 10000
casualties, put 20 900 of Mariborough's
British hors de combat when the
Marlborough army assaulted the
French trenches. The glory OF VIC
tory went to Marlborough because the
French gave ground, but Villars sent
the following message to Louis XIV
at Paris:
IF God tn his goodness should
vouchsafe us to lose another such
battle your majesty may consider your
enemies annihilated."
Mariborough's bloody victory Is his
tory that will repeat itself in almost
every offensive move Of the combat.
ants in the present war, according to
the forecast Of war students here. 1t
repeated at yerdun on larger scale
than Malp1aquet and 1t will be re-
! peated again and again until finally
| the reserves of an assaulting army
walk over the corpses of comrades in
sufficient force for a crushing victory.
Endless lines of reserves are neces-
J sary for victory.
Military experts are beginning to
agree, after verdun, that the present
war has developed into man kill
ing orgy and that it can only be, ter
minated by great battles.
| Phases Of the slaughter before Yer
| dun are given by the press to the
blood benumbed public In CORY
chunks. A French private who saw
the French retirement from Ornes. a
village captured by the Germans, said:
! 81 shudder when l look back at it..
Battalions advanced IN close ranks
! twenty abreast The shrapnel from
our "75s" and our heavy artillery
rained on them. It was as # man
had been passing through the Ger
man ranks with a scythe, moving
/ them down. Each time the shells ex-
pioded arms and legs flew high in the
air. We were so near one another
that odds and ends Of amputatssd
! limbs fefI almost on top Of US. n
one small sector of two sections, a
mere nothing, they fell by hundreds
and hundreds"
An officer describing the charge ct
the German Brandenburg troops in
| their brave assault on the Douaumont
fort, said:
! About eight o'clock the Germans
began to advance Their thfckly
massed columns completely hid the
snow on the ground as they came on
double quick Suddenly from the
! heights behind us and from the
slopes on either side our batteries,
dozens of them, got into action. They
ai,r,p ,naitad ou-,v Evory tfrna a