The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1916-07-20
TRENCH RAIDING.
Gruesome War Sport Outcome of Tn
bearable Uncertainty.


modern machine warfare, wherein
every man was supposed to have be-
come a pawn without initiative of
his own, writes a correspondent from
British headquarters in France, has
been developing perhaps the deadli-
est form of sport imagination can
conceive.
Hardly a day passes without q
trench raid by one side or the
other, and sometimes several such
sallies. No subject is more ta5ooed
in it's details by the censor. Com
manders do not want to let the ene-
my know why their raids succeed or
fail, or why the enemy's succeed or
fail. Invention fights invention;
secrecy fights secrecy.
All the elements of boxing, wrest-
ling, fencing and mob tactics, plus
the stealth of the Indian, who crept
up on a camp on the plains, and
team work Of a professional baseball
nine, are valuable to the player. The
weapon that is least needed is a
rifle. A club, or sandbag, or on
Indian battle axe or spiked club is
better. A good slugger, without any
weapon at all, may take an adver-
sary's loaded rife away from him
and knocking him down and kicking
him to death.
The monotony of trench existence
these days is broken preparing for
and against raids Battalion COM
manders work out schemes of strate-
gy which would have won them
fame in smaller wars. Fifty or a
thousand men may be engaged in a
raid. 1t may be on front of so
or 1000 yards. Its object is to take
as many prisoners and kill and
wound as many of the enemy as pos
sible in few minutes. The assault
ers try to hold on to the piece Of
trench they have taken, the guns
are turned on them, the bombers
close up on either side, and machine
guns and rifles are prepared to sweep
the zone of retirement.
An uncanny curiosity gives the
soldiers incentive for the raids. Or
dinarily they never see their enemy
hidden in his burrows across mo
Mans Land" Unseen bullets from
unseen snipers crack overhead. Un-
seen guns suddenly concentrate in a
deluge of shells. For months this
sort of thing goes on and the trenches
of the adversaries remain always in
the same. place; the grim monoto-
ny Of casualties and watching con-
tinues. This arouses the desire to
"get att the enemy which the trench
raid satisfies. It means springing
over the parapet and rushing across
"No Mans Land" into the very
houses of the enemy and, man to
man on his doorstep, proving which
is a better fighter.
To go over the parapet ordinarily
means death. In order to make any
such rush there must be ''interfer-
ence" as they say in football. and
the barb wire in front of the 'ene-
my's trench must be cut. This is
usually done by guns, which become
more and more deadly in their abili-
ty to turn accurate sprays of de-
struction on given points. They
cover the rush and they cover the
return of the raiders with their pris-
oners.
But the guns are not all; there is
all Kinds of organized trickery to en-
able a body of soldiers to get into
the enemy's trenches for a few min
utes of activity, when the occupants
throw themselves on their invaders
at such quarters that it is a question
if even a revolver is now practical
weapon. It cannot be thrown over
a traverse, and a bomb can.
Valuable Information Secured.
There have been trench raids
where every man who went out was
responsible for a casualty or prison
er while the raiders own loss might
not have been one in ten to the enc
my's. There are also failures. Sue
cess requires that every detail should
work out right. The British inaugu-
rated trench raiding which the Ger
mans promptly adopted. Where it's
development will end no one dares
to say. One advantage of any raid
is that those who return are bound
to bring back some information OF
value to the intelligence corps.
Officers in the trenches, as we'll as
officers in other military units, usual
ly wear steel corsets as a protection
against spent bullets. "Score one