Evening star., 1916-09-24

| the telephone bell rang angrily in the
| ear of the corpse.
ga dead wire our telephonist called
| 1t, grinning."
A canal runs near verdun. At ono
angle there are perhaps ten canal
boats. Half Of them are held by the
Germans and the other half by the
French.
"Why are they not destroyed by ar
tillery f1re?" I asked.
What would be the use?" was the
reply. Neither side is danger to
the other. If we were to destroy the
German boats the Germans would
be gained"
1t is not a truce, however. The other
night one naked man f1oated down the
dark canal in a boat, armed with
the canal boats he therw the bombs in
as fast as he could pull the firing
pins.
He is. by the way, silk weaver from
Paterson. His name is Walbond, or
| something like that He got away be-
'It was very funny" said he. He
giggled like a boy at the recollection.
"The Boches thought 1t was an attack
In force and ran to one side Of the
down the canal. naked. their knives in
their teeth, climbed up the ladders
hooked to the side"
A most profitable action, he said,
though so tiny it was hardly worth
were all killed.
One Of my friends has Just come In
on permission from scissors, after four
months at Verdun. He. thinks he Is in
heaven in his present post Nothing is
happening. Hardly a man a week Is
killed.
1--WE have a sort of working arrange
ment with the Boches," said he. Both
sides fire enough each morning to earn
the days pay, and then quit.
There is an odd situation in one of
the villages. Both ends Of the town
have been smashed to bits, but in the
center there is a block of houses quite
untouched. The Boche occupies some
of them and we occupy the other. We
are almost friendly"
mot quite" he assented. 1T have
picked my man to kill when the fun
starts. He is fat and red-headed."
An English officer wrote to a corre-
during the advance on the somme.
Quite Clipped me-" he announced in
the queer English that English people
affect. Really"
He was running along trench which
had but recently been occupied by the
Beches. It appears. They had been
copiously shelled out Of 1t. The bodies
and bits OF bodies he encountered fair
ly sickened me-" but he kept going
He popped around an angle in the
trench
"And there was a white hand and
arm sticking up out Of the bottom of
the wretched ditch" he tells Moth
ing else. No body at ADJUST that
white hand and arm"
AS he ran by he hastily recognized
that shell had brought down a part
of the trench wall on one of its de-
tenders. Only the white hand and arm
were left. He had an idea that the
fingers Of the hand clenched as he went
by. but he did not stop to see.
We have a topping pair Of parsons, 81
said another Englishman. TOP hole
they are, quite"
They were reading a burial service
recently, according to the yarn, when
the Germans began to shell the field
which had been turned into a cemetery
The audience ran for It's several lives
or hooked" itself to the ground. The
! parsons jumped into two convenient
graves.
$50 there they were," said the Briton
'fntonfng the burial service, don't you
know, from one grave to another, quite
as II they were used to that sort OF
| thing. I could hear them plainly from
my shell hole. Made me quite proud o,
them"