The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-11-21
FRENCH SOLDIER
 DECORATED FOR
 WIRE 7APPINC'' G.
Listens In'' on Germans and Is Rewarded for
 CleVerneSS.

l. IS R0Wafucu lOf ClevernesS.
 A young French soldier has been decorated with the Croix de Guerre because he rigged dictaphones on the
 edge of g. German trench near Fort Tavannes in the Verdun theatre of
 war. by which he was able to warn
 his fellows of 8 number of gas at- tacks in time for preparation against them. says the New York Times.
 Out of odds and ends of the debris
 of war he fashioned the first dicta- phone. the case of which was an enp- ty '75" shell. Under cover of night he placed this in the barbed wire en- tanglements of 8 first class German trench. running a wire back to his first-line trench, a ground connection carrying the return current. It worked and then he made other dicta- phones until he had an effective sys- tenn of electrical espionage on a con- siderable length of German trench.
 This same Frenchman, suffering
 with his fellow-soldiers from the
 strain ;. of not-knowing until forty
 eight or seventy-two hours later how
 things were going on the rest of the
 long battle line, rigged up a crude
 wireless station by means of which
 he caught the daily communique
 from the Eiffel Tower, and distribut- ed it to the other soldiers about him.
 George Kenneth End, in the No
 vembers issue of The Popular Science
 Monthly, paints a graphic word pic
 ture of the effectiveness of the Aap-
 paratus, which he saw working.
 This young Edison of the trench
 es,' he writes. "is the leader of a
 group of expert electricians assigned
 to one of the most difficult and most
 dangerous jobs on the front. The
 laying of wires from the listening sta
 tions to the switchboards further back
 of the lines. the wiring of under
 ground mines so as to afford illumin-
 ation for the soldier toilers under the earth, a nd the constant vigilance over
 the wires, which at any moment
 might be cut exploding shells, is his
 job.
 Difficult to Operate. 'It is useless to lay wires under ground along the Verdun front; so three wires are strung for every line connection. These wires are strung from small posts about seven feet above ground, the several units of the Isame line being as widely separated as possible. Thus the chance of hav- ling circuit broken are comparatively small.
 "At this particular switchboard. ,soI, nsaf ground. there was telephonic commu- nication with about eight different points along the first lines Every twenty minutes each of the lines was tested by the operator at the switch board. When line was found to be cut, squad of four men was sent out at once to locate the fracture and repair it. They might be called upon at any hour of the day or night, for very often when the enemy is concen- trating curtain of shell fire over a section, information as to activities in the first lines would be absolutely cut off if, it were not for the telephonic communication. It is not shell fire alone which brings down the tele- phone lines along the front The closer to the lines, the cruder becomes the method of hanging the wires; so that small windstorm or even rain (which inevitably follows lombard ment) may put the wires out of com mission.
 "The electrician in question, who had been in this particular section of the Verdun front during four months of the great battle, constructed dur ing his spare moments a device for electrically eavesdropping in the en- emy's trenches. He had very little equipment at his disposal, so he util- ized for the most part pieces from the artillery scrapheap. Through the use of his trench dictapfone several gas attacks of the enemy were apprehend- ed in time to make preparations against them.
 arranged in the enemys barbed wire series of discharged 75 shell cases containing microphones, to which he connected wires terminating in the French trench, where batteries fur sound waves on telephone receivers. A ground connection is made to carry the return current.
 News by Wireless.
 feIt is true that the closer one gets IO the front the less general becomes his perspective of the war. The men | in the arst-line trenches see the war sifted down to the few feet of trench | where. their guns are resting. News from other parts of the front is gen. 1 orally forty-eight hours late in reach l Ing these men. If a soldier who has been holding down his few feet of trench at Verdun is assured that his countrymen on the rest of the front are doing the same he is much en- couraged. This electrician has made | it possible for them to receive the | daily communique an hour after it is | transmitted from the great wireless l station of the Eiffel tower in Paris. He did some more rummaging around
 the artillery scrap heap, detached a few parts from an old musket, cut some strips from brass T5' shell case, bought a small piece of detec- tor crystal. and In short time was sending a messenger out soon after midnight, every night to take to the l men in the first line the days news. x,o4I IxStrr fn& ~A hA A4<~ ~< IL ~