The Washington herald., 1916-06-11
BRITISH LINE IS DESCRIBED:
VISITING UNDER SHELL FIRE

we found a three-inch gun In position
| Above our heads were steel beams COW
cred with several feet of earth afford
ing a safety against shells OF a calibre
| less than six-inch. A tiny opening for
the muzzle OF the gun was blocked, ex-
cepting at the moment of firing, by an
! object whose appearance, from outside,
| Is most innocently natural. The protec-
| tton afforded the gun was not SO good
as that available for the gunners. when
not firing the piece. Their quarters are
at the bottom of a pit OF great depth
below the gun positions, and while they
sleep or are of duty they remain down
| there safe against even a great howitzer
shell that might by luck or treachery
crash through and destroy the cannon.
Each gun in this battery had its separate
chamber. branching off from the main
shaft and spaced so far apart that a
hit which might destroy one gun would
not damage any of its neighbors.
| Crash Makes Head Swim.
As the three of us huddled in one of
the narrow chambers, squeezed be-
tween piles of shells and the gun
crew, an officer from outside in the
are firing" he said, "at the German
I first-line trench just this side of the
Hohenzollern redoubt."
Deftly the breach was thrown OPEN
shell slipped in. two or three levers
pulled. and then at the word Fire"
there was a crash which made my
head spin. although I had held my fin
gers in my ears. after watching a gun
ner who had assured us that he didn't
mind the noise surreptitiously put
plugs in his ears when he thought
his visitors were not looking. Several
more shots were fired, and the foreign
official who was my companion con-
fessed to me later that he heard queer
noises for an hour, and 1 confessed
the same to him.
The protection here is wonderful"
l said to the officer commanding the
battery, but suppose the Germans
made a successful local attack at this
point, would it not be impossible to
get your guns out in time to save
them?' we could get them out in
ten minutes" he said. There is a way
by which that steel and earth cover
ing could be thrown back and the guns
run out into the open. But that will
be done not when the Germans at
tack, but when we attack and our
guns are needed further front" Say
ing which, he INDUCED in a familiar
American superstition, and knocked
wood.
Cottage Full of Holes.
a brigade artillery headquarters farther
to the rear. Two years ago, this highly
organized brain center from which scores
OF wires radiate was a humble cottage;
now there are several gaping shell holes
Some were recent, but the officers
laughed at them, and one retailed a
standing army joke. A civilian is supposed
to have entered a ruined house and
asked. What made those holes-shells?" ?"
- hf-h IL
No, mice" The she'll holes hSre were
filled with sandbags, and the shaky brick
walls buttressed inside with more sand
bags, affording some protection against
small shells. We were warmly greeted
and besought for news of the London
music halls by a group of officers who
seldom see civilians other than the few
natives OF these wrecked districts who
refuse to be driven away from their
homes. Maps hung on the walls. and
the object of much OF the shelling we
had been watching for hours was ex-
planned to us
Ypres is less than thirty miles from
Loos. but the flat and boggy plains OF
west Flanders might be in a different
continent from the mining region of the
Pas de Calais in which the Loos plain
lies. Warfare. must perforce be con-
Quoted on entirely different lines Not
impossible in Flanders, but in the YpreS
salient trenches cannot be dug deep
enough to afford shelter, so water-logged
Is the soil. and the fighting men must
stand IN the water and shelter them
selves as best they can behind sandbag
barricades. Earthen parapets simply
ooze away whenever there is a rain.
From Arras to La Basse are scores Of
collieries and factories, surrounded by
towns of little brick dwellings which
merge into each other so there is almost
no open country; in Flanders the ground
In peace times Is cut UP into small patches
and cultivated as intensely as an Ameri-
can market garden. Farm buildings are
plentiful. but scattered. and towns are
few and small, with the exception of
Ypres now a CHASTITY ruin after nine
centuries OF greatness as the center OF
the cloth industry of the country.
Pays Visit to Ypres.
The two sectors Of Ypres and Loos are
those of most interest on the British
front, both for memories of the past
and prospects OF the future. We left the
Loos region early in the evening, motored
back to general headquarters, spent a
day insrecting a base, and the next
morning / was in Ypres. The trip into
the town on a bright morning, under
shell fire, with a German sausage balloon
observing the road down which the motor
was speeding, and hostile aeroplanes spit
ting machine-gun bullets at one another
overhead amid bursting shrapnel, was not
devoid of excitement
But I should have preferred a misty
day. with no aircraft about, such as
have favored the French, British. Rus
sian and assorted neutral civilians who
have been in Ypres since the German ad
vance following the first gas attack a
year ago. Deleted by the censor). Our
arrival was the signal for considerable
artillery and aerial activity as a COM
munlque would put It.
Conditions were decidedly unhealthy"
said the officer with US. We walked
rapidly, some distance apart, through the
center of the wrecked city, sheltering
ourselves IN ruins as the screams of ap-
preaching shells were heard or anti-air-
craft fragments pattered down from the
clouds. Descriptions and photographs of
Ypres dating from a year ago are de-
cidedly out of date. for the Germans have
"strafed" the city daily since that time
We entered the central square. and found
the famous masterpiece of the great
Flemish guild, the twelfth century Cloth
Hall, mere rubbish heap. 1t was a pic