The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-05-06
AMERICAN ENTHUSIASM
 IN OPEN WARFARE

Telling of the energy and enthus- iasm displayed by the Americans
 near soissons, Arthur W. Page in the
 Worlds Work for May. describes several incidents that occurred The following is an extract from his ar ticle.
 This battle south of Soissons Is a
 fair sample of open warfare as com pared with the previous trench fight ing. The front had not been stabil- iZed long enough at that point for
 much if any trench construction. But this does not mean that troops re- mained in the open as in the Civil War. / Modern artillery necessitates the use of dngouts, caves, cellars, or
 Eurrowing Of some kind. In the Civil War it would not have been normal to catch 500 men in a cave,
 as the Americans did at Soissons. In
 this war catching men underground was not unusual. These particular
 Germans had been kept in the cave
 by artillery fire and their escape had been prevented by the rapid ap-
 proach of the infantry. Neverthe- less, they refused to surrender and kept up a fire out of the caves
 mouth. The Americans called for the help of a tank, which waddled up and turned it's one-pounder into the caves mouth. But the German gar rIson still resisted, and the German artillery, spotting the tank, drove it away. About this time someone dis covered a vent from the cave and had the happy idea of dropping a
 gas bomb down it. As there were Eone on hand, messengers were sent | to the Moroccans to borrow some. fret h ho | result. After it had been dropped in the cave, the Germans surrendered and to the great surprise of the little Cleaning-up rarty of Americans, in | stead of a squad or two, there were 500 of them who came marching out. At another place, an American sergeant led an attack against 2 dugout. It was beaten off and he was wounded and captured. The Ger Eians dressed his wounds While this was going on, he convinced them that the Americans would treat them we'll and that they had better sur render. They let him go to arrange the matter, end he found 8 lfeuten- ant who paused to receive the sur
 render before he went on with the l fight The wounded sergeant brought the Germans back to division head quarters. TC surrender this way to
 sn all numbers does not sound very
 heroic, but it is a part of modern
 war, and men in a cave or dugout
 lave practically no other alternative | because one machine gun or a couple
 Cf men with Land grenades can abso- | lutely command an exN.
 The tanks also add two new fea- | tt res to modern warfare-one physi-
 cal and the ether moral. Physically
 they break up machine gun nests
 which were the main German sys- | tenn of defense. And morally they
 are of almost as much value. Off,
 cers who have been with them ir
 action are almost unanimous in say
 ing that they increased the morale of the infantry tremendously. The
 men will go anywhere with the | tanks Even an attack that has
 about played out can be reinvigor-
 ated by the presence of a tank or
 two.
 The Kaiser, placed on trial, will
 give a thrilling and heart moving ac-
 count of how 1So, ,0O0, 900 Teutons were
 attacked by 100000 Belgians and
 compelled to fight against their vii l to save themselves.