Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-07-21
No Wonder Germany Quit
NUMBER THIRTY-SEvEN

For hundreds of years aggres-
sive armies have idulged in what is
known as 'harassing' the enemy"
said Major Frank c. Mahin, of the
Army Recruiting Station, S25 Mar
ket street, to-day. In wars OF the
past this kind of work has been done
by individual sharpshooters, or at
the most groups of five or ten ad-
venturous spirits. The American
has always been particularly good
at 'harassing, having had a great
deal of experience against the In
dams. In the late war, however,
harassing has been done not only
by snipers, but to a far greater de-
gree by artillery and machine guns.
Every night the artillery shells cross
roads many miles behind the en-
emy lines, shells them at irregular
intervals with the hope of catching
troops or vehicles and inflicting
damage.
Trails, roads, cross roads, main
communicating trenches, within two
miles of the front are harassed in
termittently by the machine guns
from dusk to dawn and now and
then during daylight. After we
would get quiet sector nicely
warmed up it was nothing unusual
for our machine guns to fire as
many as five or six thousand shots
per gun per night in harassing fire
only. Since the roads and trails
must be used during the night and
you never know what minute you
will get shot up on them it is de-
cidedly unpleasant to say the least
But the ideal weapon for harass-
ing is the 81 millimeter cannon.
During the day, due to its speed of
action, it can be used on moving
targets, hidden behind a hill but
reported to the gun from an obser-
walton balloon. Sometimes at night
we would locate a Boche machine
gun that was harassing us and the
next day We would train a 81 on
that spot and wait till the Boche
started to fire that night. Just as
soon as they opened up, the 81 would
send over ten or fifteen pound and
quarter high explosive shells and
that machine gun would then and
there go out of business. The 81
can fire rs to 80 shots a minute,
so it wouldn't take very many sec
onds to shut the Boche up perma-
nently. When we had shown that
we knew a machine gun position
build a new one which would take
several days and for that period we
had little peace. The great trouble,
however, with night harassing is that
you don't know whether or not you
have hit anything. Directly in our
front during the month of August
was a village that was never shelled
and was still occupied by the wo-
men and children, as well as some
Boche soldiers. The road leading
into the village came around the
side of a hill and was in plain sight
for about $50 yards. We got tired
watching Boche soldiers going back
and forth over that stretch of road,
so one afternoon we set up 81 and
waited. In a few minutes two wo-
man came into view followed by a
wagon with two Boche soldiers on
the seat. The range was about g.
100 yards "a mile and a quarter)
but that didn't matter. We fired one
shot and the rear half of that wagon
Just disappeared. The two women
gathered up their skirts and flew.
the two Boche made a flying leap
and landed on the horses back and
away they went for the village, with
the remains of the wagon flying be-
hind. The women had about so
feet start. but they were making such
speed they beat the horse over the
100 yards stretch by at least 75 feet.
We waited a. few minutes and two
Boche appeared carrying a keg of
beer on a stretcher, the 81 let 60
and from their actions the shell
passed between those two Boche.
The front one fell on his face and
the rear one went over backward.
The former quickly dove into a
clump of bushes along side the
road, a nice little shell followed him
in about three seconds later; he
never came out The other man