Mexico weekly ledger., 1917-11-15
WAR GR|sLEY THING
OF DOG EAT DOG
(Reciprocal News service)
BY George T. Bye

position fighting is almost a case Of
"dog eat dog" Yet when you are in
Il, you have a disposition to ignore
or minimize the horrors and III op.
pressed chiefly by the gnawing mo-
notony. For a trench is only a mar
row rectangular ditch; its sides are al
ways the same; you get a view
of more than 20 feet of it at one time
as it is forever jutting out and cut
ting back in "bays" SC that a burst
ing bomb or shell can rarely kill more
than the five or six men in a bay.
Under foot is the invariable duck
board" or latticed flooring. The peo-
pie about you are invariably in brown
uniforms, invariably with a gun with
fixed bayonet, and invariably with a
cigarette. The one changing dimen-
sion is the sky which sometimes is
blue. And at most i~nfrequent inter-
walls a boob visitor will come along
and ask fool questions.
"What would happen" asked one of
these visitors, emboldened by looking
"a full minute through a trench peris-
cope and seeing not a culver in the
tangle of wire just ahead-"What
would happen if | were to hold a fin
ger in the air." (which finger?"
inquired the polite London corporal.
This one" indicating the index.
well, l don't believe l would. You
might want to play a clarinet some
day and you'd jolly well need that
finger?"
A man staggered down the trench
with blood running over his face and
over his uniform. There was so lit
tie room at this point that we had to
flatten against the wall to permit him
to pass. Close behind was another
soldier with a small red cross on his
sleeve, not a Red Cross nurse as they
never are at the front. He started to
tell us that the wounded man had just
taken his hedmet off-but the wound
ed man preferred to tell the story him
self. 81 just took off me tin-hat to
scratch me blooming top-piece when
whang! Shrapnel. And now it's me
back to blighty under me own pow
err" He wobbled on.
thought nothing of that blood.
Back in America | would not have had
dinner after such a sight al
am telling you a few grisly things.
America should know that war is
more than innocent chatter Of ma
chine guns" and "hummucks Of
chewed-up ground in No Mans
Land" The business of war is to
kill the enemy, and each side strives
to cut down the wastage of ammuni-
ton TO a minimum. The war is the
least grisly on the side which is the
best equipped. | hope the obstrue-
tionists in Congress won't make the
war extremely grisiy for our boys
when they reach the front.
1t is possible to find an occasional
skeleton, more or less intact, back
of the front. Usually these are hur-
friendly buried Germans who have been
uprooted by their own comrades
shells. If the position is an exposed
one, the skeleton remains to whiten.
We had in our party one man who
took so reverential a view of every
hard-contested section of the front
that he became a nuisance, particu-
larly to our British military escort.
These officers, under constant trial,
have no time for emotions To them
silence and a grave face is the right
veneration for a battlefield-perhaps
with an occasional "My God" Nv
friend murmured wei and over such
comments as This is hallowed
ground We dropped down into one
shell crater where there were two
wide-topped skulls, fragments Of
German uniforms projecting out of the
ground, and several pairs of boots in
which leg bones stuck out like canes
an umbrella Jar. 1t was a sight,
which, at the time, was gr~otcsaue.
II laughed, | hope the sin will be
forgiven me, but my profoundly SEN
tlmental companion announced in A
dramatic hush that he would like to
lie down and cry for an hour