Iron County news. [volume] (Hurley, Wis.) 1913-1950, 1916-10-07

With STOPPING heads, the sentrieS re-
port nothing doing" That means
nothing visible, nothing audible.
Peering over the parapet for mo
ment you see only a wilderness of
bare earth, pitted thickly with concai
holes from three to eight feet deep.
Four hundred feet away is the skele-
ton of dead village. No sign of life
is to be seen there except perhaps one
of the larks which sing cheerfully
through cannonades that would make
the pheasants in faraway Sussex nerv-
Gus, or else a big hawk slowly quarter
ing around and sending the larks into
a retirement us modest as that of Ger
man air men. And yet you know that
that waste is infested; that you need
only to raise your head a foot higher
TO bring a bullet dipping itself with
n quiet flick into the loose earth behind
you that if you crawled out on your
stomach and peeped over the edge of
each she'll hole you reached you would
come at last to one in which men in
wide-skirted gray TUNES with narrow
bands round their caps were crouching,
some Of them nursing their one good
friend, machine gun, some of them
digging hard to connect hole with hole
till row of fortuitous Cots is turned
into a line; some of them resting
tucked into little cavities scooped in
the earth or near the side wall of a
quarry, and staring apprehensively up
at bomb-laden British biplanes wheel
ing about in the sky overhead as the
larks in the grass look up at hawk.
Kindness Surprises captiVes.
You knc'v all this, because on the
way up this morning you talked with
number of Prussian and Saxon pris-
oners in one of the cages at the little
camps where the latest captiveS 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- !
ly making deprecatory gestures of sur
render and entreaty. 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 sergeants 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 shell /
holes, its good points and its bad. The /
food, it had been good, but sometimes |
it did not come because the British
guns would draw a kind of fence of /
falling shrapnel across piece of /
country. a 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 that
the British guns would not cease fir /
ing and the British aeroplanes would (
not 90 away, nor the German ones
come out of their sheds.
would see British troops in the omen
within rifle range. but would not dare
shoot lest British airmen should see
where they were and send word to q
British gun and bring down high ex-
plosive shell on the old shellhoIe IA
bury them all alive by a second rear |
rangement OF the earth. You perceive /
this apprehension just because YOU
twice today have seen the end Of n
stiff black-bOoted leg protruding out of
the wall of an old Shellhole.
other questions about their life at
the front the prisoners answered as |
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 rhere any desertions2 No. /
Many men would be glad TO be pris-
oners. but would not desert. ManvI
more still would surrender if th,, Ger.
man officers were not so quick TO shoot /
men who put up their hands. and If /
all the German soldiers knew thar the /
allies did not kill prisoners nor have
them scalped by Savages.
Strain on German Nerves.
Those, then, are the kind of men
and that is the kind Of life aud STATE
Of mind which exist beyond the 800
intervening yards OF blank ground. On |