The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-06-11

bomb can. Running into German around the corner of a traverse, blow may be better than shot
 There have been trench raids where every man who went out was responsible for ca asualty or prisoner while the raid CTS own loss might not have been one in 10 to the enemy's. There are also fail ures. Success requires that every detail should work out right. The British inau- gurated trench raiding which the Ger mans promptly adapted Where its de- velopment will end, no one dares ven lures to say. One advantage of any raid Is that those who return are bcsiA3 to bring back some information of value 50 the intelligence corps.
 Officers in the trenches as well as of ficers in other military units, usually wear steel corsets a protection against spent bullets.
 Score one for the breastplate," said an officer who had been doubled over by a shell fragment which hit him in the abdomen. Instead of flow of blood crm- soning his blouse, all that was visible through the rent in the cloth was an abrasion on a steel surface.
 "But for your new corset, you would have been dead by now" the surgeon told him.
 WEAR STEEL ARMOR
 Early in the war an officer who wore protection of this kind would have been frowned on by his fellows as unsol- dierly. A type of corselet of small plates of highly tempered steel joined together by steel wires is being more and more worn by officers. Its structure adapts it. self to the movements of the body, it weighs only few pounds and, fitting snugly as a vest. it is not cumbrous. If the son of Lord Shaughnessy, president of the Canadian Pacific railway, who 1-.I =. one, his life might have been saved, ac- cording to his comrades. Since then Ca nadian commanders have strongly urged all their officers to buy corSeletS.
 The corselet is worse than no protec- ton against bullets unless the latter are spent. Such is their power of penetra- tion that they go through the thin steel. ''mushrooning" and making larger wound than if nothing had been in their way. But in the trenches, unless one shows his head above the parapet, and is moving about in the shell zone in the rear of the trenches, one is rarely ex- posed to bullets. When an officer goes into charge in face of machine gun and rifle fire. he takes off his corselet.
 On average days in the trenches, the main danger is from shrapnel bullets and fragments from she'll explosions which may inflict ugly and fatal wounds pre- ventable by comparatively thin protection to such vulnerable substance as human flesh. Together, a corselet and steel helmet pretty effectively shield vital parts against missiles of low velocity
 The use of the corselet is limited vir- tually to officers who pay for them out of their own pockets. The expense and labor of supplying all ranks of great army with them would seem out of the question. But gradually all the British soldiers are being supplied with the steel helmets after their successful use by the French, who first introduced them. The French pattern is quite graceful beside the British, whichSis round and something the shape of a toadstool. The British is heavier than the French and there is method in it's soup plate grotesqueness. Thanks to its form bullet which strikes if in front, istead of going through the head as is the case with the French helmet, glances and follows the inside of the helmet, passing out at the rear.