The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1918-01-18
At NIGHT
STORM OF Shell.
Giving No-Man's Land the
Once Over In Dark
RAT-TAT-TAT OF BOOBIES
Great Game of Hide and Seek
Played BY French and
Germans
w. S. FORREST.

w. ). FUNNIEST.
With The French Armies In The
Field, December 15.-[By Mail.]-
Night patrolling-reconnais
No Mans Land is something that
every first line soldier knows.
The constant surveillance of the
enemy necessitates almost nightly eX-
aminations of the blighted strip of
ground in front of the trenches; wire
entanglements on the friendly side as
we'll as that of the enemy.
Men who find monotony in night
trenches draw their packet of thrills
from the silent games of hide and
seek" that can be played in No
Mans Land on any moonless night
Trench soldiers curse the moon.
Tonight is moonless. The sky is a
speckled dome. Occasional bursts of
enemy machine gun fire and nervous
grenade and rocket firing have
ceased. Both trenches settle down to
period of quiet which is customary
at intervals over routine nights in
trenches where both sides have been
at it for over three years.
Give EN- Few Rounds.
"Give them a few rounds with the
mitrailleuse and see if they're still
alive" the company captain ordered
A machine-gun lieutenant sent a
panoramic sweep of lead out into
the darkness. A sheepskin coated
poilu, silently occupying his little
niche in the trench next, obeying on
order, dropped grenade into the
cup like end of his grenade rifle and
fired. The half pound explosive slug
left the cup with a metallic ring and
detonated with a roar and white
smoke cloud score of yards in front.
| The poilu, laid his steel helmet on
the parapet and deity heaved a
hand grenade which sent it's pieces
ringing from just in front of the wire
as everybody "ducked." A parachute
flare -rocketed up from few
yards away and floated down lighting
up nothing but the frosty tangle of
wire and the dull grey grass ahead.
Then it became quiet again. THE
boche is not very hateful tonight"
the captain suggests.
81 Brewing Night Coffee.
A soldier comes along the trench
with steam ing pail 1t is the night
coffee brewcd lack i'll the third line
rolling kitchen ard carried up. This
kitchen soldier is the nights most
welcome guest. With the coffee he
brings along the "gnole," the French
army's ration of grog. A poilu ex-
planned tonight that American SOL
diers, in this trench some time ago,
called it booze" and drank it with a
gulp and cough. Most pOilus mix
it with their coffee, though this pOilu
added that he found it handy fuel
when his regiment was on the Chemin
des Danes to heat field rations in a
stove made of an upturned German
shrapnel helmet.
| The night patrol is starting. The
trench has been warned not to fire at
/ crawling figures in No Mans Land.
| A captain and lieutenant crawl cover
| the top" leading the way. They carry
/ blunt little automatics in one hand.
A half dozen poilus follow, two
deadly, pineapple bombs i'll each
hand and the party picks its way
cautiously through the wire.
The Wire Entangiements.
| Traversing ordinary wire entangle-
ments is an impossible task but here
an almost invisible little path winds
its crooked way over the dead grass
carpet where the wire is lowest and
occasinally detours to escape shell
hole. This path will be wired up
tight again before daybreak. The
frosty wire rattles and tangs despite
utmost care in stepping high while
STOPPING low and occasionally craw-
ling. Sounds intensity and seen I'M
cessarily sharp. But to veteran ears
they are just the ordinary.
| The first entanglements are passed.
A short open space and then the
next. A. soldier stumbles little
over an invisible wire and the captain
stops to whisper "doucement." The
second maze is passed more quitely
because it's narrower.
] ut always seems long time the
first time you come through the
wire,' the captain alphabetically
whispers. But he's telling a polite
little lie and knows it because his
/ first sensation in wire climbing was
years ago in this war and now a
| faded memory.
No Mans Land.
| You are in No Mans Land
waste of grey grassy ground except
| for shell holes here and there-some
old and overgrown with weeds and
| others now black dirt craters. In
front of you is simply blackness
hiding other rows of hostile enemy
wire ahead. Behind is the vivid
frosty stuff you've just come through.
| A figure huddles in shell hole
/ ten yards away. Everybody sees it
and crouching lower, stops. The lieu
| tenant crawls ahead alone, his auto
matte poised. But nothing happens
and he waves the others ahead. 1t
was only poilu who came out earlier
to mend the wire where boche shell
mussed it up early in the day. He
had been little puzzled by the silent
patrol.
The party moves ahead, Indian file
and in five minutes the. novice sud-
ldenly discovers that every direction
lis darkness. The tangle of wire in
the rear has faded from view. Oc-
OCCASIONALLY white object appears on
the ground. A closeup look and try
to forget The rest of the patrol
have seen things like this before and
think nothing of it. But a grinning
white thing in tie center of No