Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-07-05
No Wonder Germany Quit
By BRIGGS
NUMBER TWENTY

lone day early in September we
were all ordered to report near a
certain village about thirty miles
back of the trenches for demon
stration," said Major Frank c.
Mahin, of the Army recruiting sta
ton, S25 Market street, Harrisburg.
Everyone was much mystified, and
on our arrival at the designated
place we found the road lined with
trucks and some four or five nun
dred officers in the field or getting
out of their trucks. We were assem-
bled out in the middle of the field
and an officer of the Ordnance Corps
gave us u talk. He said there was
big offensive in preparation ana
in this offensive u surprise was TO
be sprung on the Boche and that
the present meeting was to demon
strate to us this surprise. lie IN
formed us that American chemi
had finally perfected a compound
of thermite an phosphorus and had
made rifle and Stokes mortar gren-
AIDES filled with this compound. Both
thermite and phosphorus are SUD-
stances which burn on exposure TO
the air; thermite burns so violently
that if placed on top of sale II
will burn a hole right through. Ma
turalIy if q drop of either of these
substances should land on a man S
hanr it will burn right through ana
the only way to stop it is to grai
a knife and cut the burning SUD
stance out and that very quickly
The officer told us he had some of
these new rifle grenades which he
10 fire n
least what they looked like. After
passing Il number around through
the crowd to be examined he walked
across the field to a Clump of bushes
about 200 yards away in which we
had noticed a couple of soldiers evil
IDENTIFY waiting for som mething. Soon
after he disappeared in the bushes,
there came the Unfamiliar pop of
rifle grenade being fred and we
| saw clustering object flying up, up
| into the air and coming towards us.
BY its direction of flight we saw 1t
was going to land twenty-five or
thirty yards to one side of the mob
of officers so everyone just stood
there watching. The grenade started
| to come down. tumbling apparently
slowly through the air, it got down
to within about fifty feet of the
ground when it suddenly exploded
with a big burst of white smoke
| and out of that smoke came a rain
of fire, literally a rain of fire. L
fraction of a second that mob
of officers stood still while through
their brains passed a vision Of
| of those drops of fire burning n
| hole through hand. No one waited
| to see whether or not the rain was
! going TO hit us; some tried to run
backward, some turned and ran,
others just dove headfirst to ge'
out of range. Next to me was y
stout general who went into re-
verse and started to back up; he
backed a couple of steps, caugh
his spurs in a clump of grass,
! turned a backward somersault in
the air and landed on his prominent
| tummy and kept right on moving
away from that fire sliding on his
stomach. IF some of those in front
rank who tried to buck their way
through the crowd could do equally
good work in a football team, the
team would be a world beater.
"Ten days later we went over
the top in the st. Mihiel offensive
| promptly ran into some Boche ma
| chine gun nests and cut loose at
them with the new grenades. Many
times I saw Boche in a hurry, but
never in such a hurry as those ma
chine gunners were to get away
from the vicinity in which the skies
were raining fire."