The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-08-29

put pSIOTe Ine-lay the corpse or Q Ger- man soldier in the uniform of the Fourteenth Bavarians.. It seemed la- ter that the sun was hidden and shivered in the wind. The German cannonade was now so heavy that 1t seemed impossible to rejofn my com rades, so I stripped the Boche of his coat and trousers and put them on.
 After waiting for some time, a wild idea seized me of crawling toward the enemy's line-the greater part of their shells were falling behind me-to see if I could learn anything useful. It was crazy plan, but my escape from the explosion had caused in me a state of fatalism in which nothing seemed to matter. Besides, I speak German fluently. and hoped to get very valu- able information.
 After creeping through the brush wood twenty or thirty yards, reach ed a German communication trench, denly 'Wer da!' rang out, and I saw a group of German soldiers cooking food at the entrance to a dugout.> They greeted me with amazement and learned that the Bavarian battalion, to which they imagined I belonged, had been annihilated by the French bonn ,bardment. They were a newly ar rived Silesian regiment from Verdun. just brought up to full strength by drafts from home. Already in two days they had 400 casualties while waiting in the rear lines.
 Munich Accent Deceives Them.
 My Munich accent quite deceived them, and. my lost front teeth account ed for any indistinctness of speech. So they made me welcome, and the ser geant in charge said he would be glad if I would stay with them, as they were expecting orders to counter-at- tack after nightfall and my knowledge of the ground would be very useful That suited me admirably. SO shared their food. which. despite reports to the contrary, was good-sausage and vegetable soup.
 But their spirits were very differ ent from ours. All were utterly sick of the war. They complained bitterly of the bad news from home. They said the French artillery was disgust ingly barbarous-tiey had lost 30 per cent. of their effectiveness in quiet three weeks before Verdun. One man even declared he would be quite willing if the Allies should win, if on- ly peace came back quickly. The rest did not object beyond stipulating that there must be no invasion of Germany.
 About o'clock we got orders to advance through the undergrowth and dig in along the further edges so as to be ready to attack the French po- sition later. The whole company ad- vanced. but saw no officer and when I mentioned the fact to a sergeant his gesture of disgust spoke volumes.
 The rest of the battalion was align ed to the right and left and the Ser geant reckoned that the two remaining would form the second and third waves of the attack. The men seemed we'll trained. No shirker was apparent and all dug splendidly but their spirit was very different fsom the eager anticipation of my comrades before the assault that same morning.
 Suddenly about 10 o'clock we be- came the target of the most frightful tombardment I have ever known. They were mostly large calibre shells. They fell with awful accuracy and where as at Verdun during the worst bom- bardment one could hide in a shell hole with the great. probability that subsequent missiles would sweep fur here the French shells kept falling, as it seemed. everywhere at once. One poor wretch-a well educated man