The Elk Mountain pilot., 1916-10-05


port nothing doing" That means
nothing visible, nothing audible.
Peering over the parnpet for mo
ment you see only wilderness OF
bare earth, pitted thickly with conicai
holes from three to eight feet deep.
Four hundred feet away is the skeie-
ton of dead village. No sign OF lie
is to be seen there except perhaps one
of the larks which sing cheerfuiiy
through cannOnndes that would make
the pheasants in faraway Sussex nerS-
Gus, or else n big hawk slowly quarter
ing around and sending the larks into
a retirement as modest us that of Ger
man air men. And yet you know that
that waste is infested; that you need
only to raise your head foot higher
to bring bullet dipping itself with
Il quiet flick into the loose earth behind
you; that IL you crawled out on your
stomach and peepcd over the edge OF
each shell hole you reached you would
come at last to one in which men IN
wide skirted gray tunics with narrow
bands round their caps were crouciing.
some of them nursing their one good
friend. n machine gun, some of them
digging hard to connect hole with hole
till row of fortuitous dots is turned
into line; some of them resting
tucked into little cavities scooped In
the earth or near the side wall OF
quarry. and staring apprehensively up
Mt bomb-laden British biplanes wheel
ing about in the sky overhead as the
| Iarks In the grass look up at n hawk.
Kindness Surprises captives
You know all this, because on the
way up this morning you talked with
| n number of Prussian and Saxon pris-
oners in one of the cages at the little
camps where the latest cnptives rest
for some days out of range of their
friends heavy guns till they can be
| sent by train to the base or to Eng
| land. Three days ago they came down
broken-hearted to the cage, their faces
lined and drawn with mental over
strain, some of them still mechanical
Iy making dcprecatory gestures of sur
render and entrenty. As they marched
today all the lines were smoothed out
| They had been fed and had slept for
whole nights, and had found that the
"murderers" described to them by
\ their own sergennts inflicted nothing
but offers of cigarettes. So they be-
gan to expand in the unexpected sun
shine of good treatment and they told
| what life had been like In the she'll
holes, its good points and its bad. The
food. Ii had been good, but sometimes
II did not come because the British
guns would draw kind of fence of
falling shrapnel across piece of
country, n sort of showerbath of bull
lets dropping along the line. so nobody
could cross the line without being hurt.
Still the bread and meat and chocolate.
when they did come were good and
the water was sometimes mineral wa
| ter in bottles. The trouble was thnt
the British guns would not cease fir
ing and the British aeroplanes would
not 20 away. nor the German ones
come out of their sheds.
Sometimes the men in the shellhole
would see British troops in the open
within rifle range but would not dare
shoot lest British airmcn should see
where they were and send word to a
British gun and bring down high eS-
| ploSive shell on the oid sneIIilole 10
bury them all alive by second rear
ronrement OF the earth. YOU perceive
this apprehension just because you
twice today have seen the end of a
stiff blncl- booted leg protruding out of
the wall of an old shellhole.
other questions nbout their life Mt
the front the prisoners answered rs
freely. Had they talked politics? Yes,
there were any number OF Social Dem
ocrats in the army and every one
Thought great changes would come
when the war was over, but not now.
Were there any desertions? No.
MANY men would be glad to be pris-
oners. but would not desert. Mnny
more still would surrender II the Ger
man officers were not so quick to shoot
mey who put up their hands, nnd If
nil ,he German soldiers knew that the
niles did not kill prisoners nor have
them scalped by savnges.
Strain on German Nerves.
Those, then, are the kind Of men.
md that is the kind of life and state
of nlind which exist beyond the 800
Intervening yards OF blank ground. On