The Oskaloosa herald. (Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa) 1885-1919, 1917-03-08
HORROR Of WAR
TOLD.BY SIMMS
GIVES REASONS WHY GERMANS
REITERATED ALONG ANcRE.
WERE BECOMING LUNATlCs
Their Positions More Hideous Than
the Scuppers Of HelI--Madame
Tassaud's Chamber of Horrors
Not to Be Compared.

With the British Armies in France.
Mar. 7.-(By William Phillip Simms,
United Press Staff Correspondent.)- -
One reason why the Germans re-
treated along the Ancre was they
we're fast becoming a garrison OF
gibbering lunatics. Their position
had become more hideous than the
scuppers of hell. Mud-bottomless
| in places-and the ceaseless pound
| ing of the British guns had turned
their positions into stench-pits too
horrible for human nerves to stand.
The United Press correspondent
was the first American permitted to
penetrate acros the ground vacated
by the Germans to Thillany toward
Bapaume. Madame Tassauds wax
works chamber of horrors was as
cheerful as May day, compared
with this field ! zigzagged around
stagnant cesspools and interlocking
shell craters in which the water was
the exact color of blood. This might
have been due to chemicals in the
high explosives which rent the holes
or the nature of the ground itself.
/ found myself stepping on German
bodies which Uttered the region.
They were in all imaginable condi-
tions and positions sometimes piled
several deep.
saw arms sticking full length out.
of the mud that concealed all else of
the bodies to which they were. at
tached. There were legs, feet, half
bodies-or heads alone-protruding.
Some lay face down, some were
prone on their backs, exactly as il
asleep.
At another place on a pile several
deep hay boyish officer, fair as a
girl, with his arms thrown back and
his blue eyes staring to the sky. His
sandy hair had been brushed back
modishly by the rain.
Imagine scenes like this covering
miles. Imagine every trace of vege-
tation long since blasted away.
Imagine 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.
This is the territory the Germans
left.
The German prisoners told us that
communication trenches had cen
wiped out by the incessant British
fire and the mud, so that relief and
re-victualling was difficult, most dan
gerous.
Men on such missions were caught
by the British machine guns sweep.
ing in the darkness and could not be
saved. 1t was impossible to save
those thus cut off by the destruction
of the communication trenches. They
have remained there until now when.
the British are burying the remains.
Such was the sink-hole occupied
by the Germans. -
The scenes were too horrible ferfs
the human nerves to withstand. They
make quite believable the stories of
soldiers who became raving maniacs.
1t is quite possible that in the with
drawal Germany 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 Ger
mans retire their new positions can
be reduced to the same hideous, un-
endurable quagmire of cadavers and
much where dead hands clutch from
the mud at the kaiser's men and
dead eyes stare at them from the
slime, defying even German discip-
line to hold live men in line.