The Washington herald., 1919-04-06

tnoSo Dtlukln& treucneS euo w
bit Of nghting." That was in
summer. In winter when the
water was ice cold IT may be
imagined what our men en-
dured. They were always wet
They slept in wet clothes. sat in
wet dugouts. stood In wet boots
and the cold slime of mud in
Flanders encased them and put
its clammy touch about their
very souls. In the first two
winters of the war they were
stricken with a disease called
trench foot" Its symptoms
were exactly like those of frost
bite, a sense of burning until
all sense was deadened and the
feet blackened and rotted. Bat
talions lost 40 per cent OF their
men for a time from this cause
and in the old Ypres salient I
have seen men of the 49th
back from the trenches, or car
ried pick-e-back by their COM
rades, unable to walk a yard.
and with both feet tied up in
cotton wool at the field ambu-
lance. There was no comfort
for them IN their dugouts which
were miserable holes in the wet
earth without any of the COM
fort or safety Of those deep
tunnelled dugouts which the
Germans had built for them
selves below the ridges. They
were not only wet but alive
with vermin and our officers and
men from decent, clean homes,
some of them used all their
lives to the delicacies and re-
finements of civilized life, found
themselves swarming with lice
and they hated this worse than
the danger Of five-point-mines
and trench mortars with the
risk of being buried alive in
their dugouts or killed by a
flying scythe of steel across
their parapets. For the lice did
not leave them alone by day or
night and made life itself foul
and disgusting thing. Larger
vermin-rats and mice-invaded
the trenches and romped and
squealed in the dugouts, attack
ing food supplies and careless
of living men. though they liked
dead men best. and outside in
No Mans Land, or in the bogs
of Hooge-the worst he'll Of all
where our men sat and lived
amidst the corruption of human
fesh-gnawed dead bodies un-
til their bones were bare and
white.
British soldiers
Awful were great fight
Effects of ers but bad diggers
Shell shock. and the German
trenches, dugouts
and earthworks were always
better than ours so that in the
old stationary warfare their
losses in daily casualties were
less than ours. Later when we
captured many of their trench
systems our men made use of
their deep dugouts and she'll
proof tunnels so that their
physical condition of life i'm
proved. but meanwhile there was
greater intensity OF gunfire on
both sides and all the battle
fields were ravaged with harass-
ing fire which reached by long
distance guns twelve, fifteen and
even twenty miles behind the
lines, so that men billeted in
little villages a long way from
what they thought was the
danger zone were blown to
pieces in farm houses and cot
tages. There was one house be-
low Mont st. Eloi. near the
Vimy Ridge, which was blown
clean out by one shell so that
nothing but the outer walls re-
mained and not a trace was
found OF thirty-siN Canadian
soldiers who had been Quartered
there. 1t was the constant she'll
ing behind the lines and in the
lines which wore down the
nerves Of men and caused that
new disease. unknown to man
kind before, called shell-shock-
the most horrible malady in
war. Strangely enough it af-
fected the stolid, phlegmatic
type OF man more than the
nervous and highly strung. and
IL had nothing to do with lack
of courage. but was a physical
disorder of the nervous system
caused by conclusion. During
the attack on Thiepval in the
battles OF the Somme I saw a
tall and strapping sergeant-ma-
jor go raving mad by she'll shock.
He kept clawing at his mouth
and his body was shaken with
commissions, so that he had to
be strapped to a stretcher. An
other soldier near him, a young
and handsome boy. was shaking
in a kind OF ague, staring wild
ly with a dreadful terror in his
eyes. quite insane. After al
most every battle we fought
through four and a half years
of fighting there was always
a crowd OF shell-shock cases and
I used to turn my head away
from the sight of these poor
boys. with their dazed and loll-
ing eyes and that clawing ges-
ture at the mouth. Our asylums
are still full of them.
Every year, every month al
most. intensified the powers OF
destruction on each side, or
changed one form of slaughter
for another. In the early days
of trench warfare the Germans
mined under our lines and our
officers and men in places like
the Hohenzollern redoubt and
Fricourt and st. Eloi went
about their duties with the aw-
full consciousness that at any
moment the ground might open
beneath their feet and bits of
their bodies be hurled sky high.
So II happened many times un-
til by counter mining we COM
pletely defeated the enemy's
underground work. Then the