The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-03-06
Were Fast Becoming q Garri-
son of Maniacs.
DEAD STREWN ABOUT UNBURIED
Pounding of Guns Too Horrible
for Human Nerves.
Correspondent First There
Gives Graphic Description.
BY WILLIAM PHILIP SININIS.

With the British Armies in France,
March s.-One reason why the Ger
mans retreated along the Ancre was
because they were. fast becoming a
garrison of gib5ering lunatics. Their
position had become more hideous
than the "scuppers of hell Mud
bottomless in placeS-and the cease
less pounding of the British guns had
turned their positions into stencil pits
too horrible fer human nerves to
stand.
The United Press correspondent was
the first American permitted to pene-
trate across the ground evacuated by
the Germans as far Thilloy towards
Bapaume.
Madame Tussaud's wax works
chamber of horrors was cheerful as a
May day compared with this field of
terrors, painfully pictured at each
step. I zig-zagged around stagnant
cess pools and interlocking shell
craters in which the water was the
exact color of blood. This might have
been due to che rnicals in the high eX-
plosives which rent the holes, or to the
nature of the ground itself.
Stepping oil Bodies.
] found myself stepping on German
bodies which Uttered the region. They
were in all imaGina bic conditions and
positions-sometimes piled several
deep. 1 saw arms sticking full length
out of the mud that concealed all
else of the bodies to which they were
attached. There were legs. feet. half
bodies-or heads alone-protruding
Some lay face down. some were prone
on their backs, exactly as if asleep.
At another place, on pile several
deep, lay a boyish officer fair as a
girl, with his arms thrown back and
his blue eyes staring to the skies His
sandy hair had been brushed back
M iSh Ia
Imagine scenes like this covering
miles. Imagine every trace of vegeta-
ton long since blasted away. I'm
agine the earth powder stained and
churned up from ten to sixty feet in
depth. Imagine mud SO bottomless
that the German prisoners claim their
men frequently were swallowed up
whole in attempting to cross after
dark. ~--e'-' -
This is the territory the Germans
left.
Mud Was Bottomless.
The German prisoner told US that
communication trenches had been
wiped out by the incessant British
re-victualing was difficult. most
dangerous. Men on such missions
were caught by the British machine
guns sweeping in the darkness and
could not be saved 1t was impossible
to save those thus cut off by the de-
Struction of the communication
trenches. The dead were left where
they fell.
Two attacks in November left
scores of dead Germans outside the
trenches. They have remained there
until now. when the British are bury
ing the remains.
Such was the sink-hole occupied by
the Germans.
The scenes were too horrible for the
human nerves to Withstand. They
make quite believable the stories of
soldiers who became ravfng maniacs
1t is quite possible that in the with
drawal German plans to use her troops
elsewhere in big offensive, but the
British are undisturbed.
One outstanding moral OF the Ger
man retreat Is wherever the Germans
stop their retirement, their new posi-
tons can be reduced to the same hid
eous uncomfortable quagmife of cad
AYERS and muck. where crisped dead
hands clutch from the mud at the
kaiser's men and dead eyes stare at
them from the slime, defying even
German discipline to hold live men
in line.