The Monticellonian., 1918-03-15
Correspondent Gives Thrilling Description of First Ex-
 perience at Front.
LIGHTED BY STARRY BALLOON
Night Watchers Trust Nobody But ThemseIves-Both Sides Watching the Flarng Bombing and Ma
 chine Cunning at Intervals.

NtitC ak
 With the French Armies in the Field. Night life in a first-line trench has Its little bag of thrills for the begin ner.
 Poilus say night trenches are monot- onous, but all Poilus have seen livelier things than trench life.
 To an American correspondent, spending a first night on the fringe of No Mans Land precisely as no doubt hundreds of thousands of Ameri- cans will before the end of the war, a nocturnal trench has all the melodra- matic elements to keep up interest and drive monotony away.
 Darkness seems to settle down quickly over the frowsy, weedy, gray strip in front, which nobody owns and nobody treads in daylight.
 A battery of French guns bark sharply In the rear. Firefy flashes wink a mile behind the enemy's wire. The French gunners are saying Good night" to Boche battery, and the dull ''booni," "boom," "boom"-then the squeal of enemy steel above tells you the Roche is answering. Unless un- foreseen things happen tonight, the gunners will rest on their arms" un- til daybreak. On quiet" sectors like this it often happens.
 With darkness down, the night shift Is eating supper in their dugouts and rigging out in sheepskin jackets to begin the silent night watch over the parapets. The dugouts-corrugate steel and sand-bag construction at in tervals few yards back of the first line-are smelly and dark, but filled with life. It's human life and insect life, the latter making little difference so long as steel and sandbags shed va grant shells. Men say they can get accustomed to insects, but the bite of a shell is different.
 Signs of America.
 The correspondent found the inevi- table American sign in these dugouts tonight Penciled names on the wood en hunks suggested New York's East Sldtf St- louiS AiiiN and other purer American names sug- gested early settlers on the prairies of the middle West. In fact, 1t was in the trench just outside that small body of American "Sammies" on No vember 8 fought desperately against overwhelming German odds in Ameri- ca's first battle of the big European war.
 The night Poilus have taken their places a few yards apart along the parapet. The day Poilus have filed into the dugouts for food and rest.
 A machine gun is "rat-tat-tat-ing" its evening tryout All machine guns are frequently tested at night. A fainter "rat-tat-tat-tat" shows that the Roche Is doing it, too. A bright. fiery streak roars up nearby and small white parachute floats gently down with an incandescent flare lighting up No Mans Land for a hundred yards around. Somebody saw suspicious move beyond the wire. an officer ex- plained. The officer orders few rifle grenades fired as a warning to prowl- ing Boches, perhaps trying to learn something or to cut the wire. The Poilu heads, silhouetting over the para pet at intervals against the blackness beyond, duck down" for an instant while the grenades explode with cav ernous roars. These missiles fly into hundred pieces each and wipe out life for rods around
 More machine guns are tapping their warnings or having their "tryouts' here and there along the line. The Boche again, as if nervous, Is doing 1t l too.
 Nobody Is Trusted.
 A half-hour follows without single 1 spark of fireworks. But 1t breaks out again-both sides watching, fiaring bombing. machine-gunning suspicious things in that uncanny black stretch of No Mans Land, fringed on each side - ~~~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~