Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1916-08-14

Headquarters of the British Army in
France Correspondence of the As
ISOLATED Press -These young Can
adams in khaki playing baseball in
Belgian pasture could tell you what
the shell fire at Verdun was like.
Mud-stained, bIood-stained, they had
come from the bloody piles of dirt
which had been their trenches, and
after a long sleep they had wondered
why they were alive, and started to
play baseball 10 pass the time till
they should go into the trenches again.
They had been in the thick of it from
$50 a. N. till 1:30 p. m. on June ,,
right in the apex Of the Ypres salient,
that bend in the line which had stuck
out as invitingly to the Germans as
the Verdun salient for more than a
year.
The Germans could arrange their
guns in fan-shape around it as they
could at Verdun; and they did. When
their guns began to speak the British
guns spoke back; and even the old in
habitants of the Ypres salient agreed
that il was the worst ever. Nobody
on the spot ever supposed that there
were so many guns in either the Ger
But the officer inside the farmhouse
sitting at the farmers dining room
table, could tell all about this small
part Of it. He and his men had been
in and out of the trenches on their
shifts till they were quite used to the
monotony OF the trench life and the
daily wastage. The morning OF June
, was very quiet. A general who was
taken prisoner afterward was max
ing an inspection. An occasional
crack of a bullet overhead and an oc-
casiOnal shot in answer At $50 the
inferno broke without any more warn
ing than boiler explosion. They al
ways dO-British, or French or Ger
man.
Five point mines" (that new So
inch German SHIELD, .'whiz-bangs."
trench mortar shells and Silent Liz
zies" "a naval gun shell of high We
lOcity which is not heard coming until
it bursts).
I knew what we were in for" said
the officer.
Anybody with any experience at the
front would know. At any time either
side wants to concentrate its artillery
on a certain frontage of trench that
frontage is bound to go down; and
the attacking side can rush its infan-
try in and take the debris. The diff
fcuIty Is TO hold it This time the
shells were coming from the front
and both sides. According to the usual
system they were laid on both the
front and the support trenches with
a curtain of fire between the two.
You know the kind of country il
is" this quiet young officer from Tor
onto went on.
Nature as well as shells is against
the soldier. If he digs a trench, water
fills it. Mostly he must depend on
sandbags roofs and walls Of sand
bags. He cannot dig cellars 20 feet
under the earth and crawl into them
when the "cloudburst of he'll" de-
sends as in billy and mountainous
country. So nobody ever has a good
word to say about the Ypres salient
except the peasants The soil is rich.
We had no orders to CO." said the
officer We stuck"
They could not fire back at those
guns thousands of Yards away with
their rifles. No one was showing his
head in the German trenches opposite
II man leaned over a section of par
apet remaining to fire he and II might
be blown away by another shell The
only thing to 40 was for each man to
find any kind of cover he could in a
fresh shell-hole, if no parapet re-
manned. and wait Messeng gers in such
instances, be IL the British or German
side, have one chance OF five in sur