Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-09-20
No Wonder Germany Quit
BY MAJOR FRANK @. MAHIN
or the Army Recruiting Station

Might after night during the early
part of August my patrols came IN
and reported hidden Boche
machine gun which was raising the
devil with them. We finally got the
blamed little gun exactly located
and found we could not reach IL
with the stokes mortars, and it was
so hidden behind hills and woods
that the .37 millimeter guns could
not reach it. So the only thing we
could do was to get the artillery
on the job and l requested that they
destroy the machine gun. In a
couple of hours a young captain OF
the 155 millimeter howitzers Co.
inch) came up to my headquarters
and wanted to see the effect of the
fire of his battery. had telephone
strung up into a big tree and the
captain and l then went up. He
called his battery and remarked:
'D-Y speaking. Play ball! Bat
ter up said cryptic remarks mean
ing that Captain Donnelly was
watching and to commence firing.
A couple of minutes passed and a
shell went screeching overhead,
landing with a cloud of black smoke
and a huge pillar of mud about 100
meters beyond the machine gun
emplacement. The captain spoke
into his phone over, one hundred,
line 1 remarked 'gottcha, Steve!
A hit one hundred meters too far,
but directly beyond with no correc-
ton needed to either side Right
you are!' my friend answered.
Whoosh! went another shell towards
the machine gun emplacement and
this time it hit about a hundred
OF IN,
rection was short, one hundred
line Again we waited for the old
familiar whoosh, and soon it came
When the third shell hit there was
an entirely different mess of debris
| thrown up; it was a mess of flying
white fragments, evidently concrete
In my ear came a cool voice, "A
hit. Fire for effect!' And then the
captain laid down his phone and
grinned at me. Another short pause
and that part of the landscape OF
northern France contained in q
radius of about twenty-five yards
/ from the machine gun emplacement
began to rapidly disappear. Be-
| lieve me! things were happening
At the end of ten minutes no hu-
man being would ever have believed
that there had been a machine CUR
EN- placement in that churned up
shell shocked piece of ground. Wher
| the firing had ceased l was salts
| factorily convinced that my patrols
would have no further trouble from
| that particular locality. But the
| trouble was that evidently our Teu.
tonic friends did not appreciate the
little fireworks display the captain
and I had viewed from the upper
story of a big pine tree, for abou
an hour later they proceeded to droI
about two hundred of their owT
six inch shells into one of my com
| bat groups. Naturally at the con
clusion of their party there was {
decided need of repairs to trenche:
in that combat group. l hastenet
down there to see If there was any
thing left of the seventeen men oc
| cupying the group and found six
teen of them safe and sound dis
| cussing their narrow escapes be
fore reaching the shelter of the deel
dugout. A number of rifles and on
automatic had completely disap
peared. as we'll as one man. He haC
been out in front of the group a
an observation and listening pos
and where his sand bag reveted hol
had been, there was now simply
huge shell crater. Right next t,
that hole and actually joining i
was another shell hole. Three o
four of us were looking around 70
some sign of the missing man ant
climbed into the adjoining shel
hole. We stood there talking abou
him when suddenly there was /;
movement under our feet as thougl
a big mole were burrowing around
We all stepped back with amaze
ment and out of a cascade of dir
there arose the missing seventeenth
man. He was a pretty pasty greer
eyes as big as saucers and still pret
ty nearly scared to death, but no
even scratched. 1t seems shel
had burst, making the shell hol
in which we found him and immedi
ately. afterward one had burst be
hind him, literally blowing him owe
into the first hole and then sue
cessive explosions had proceeded t
completely bury him alive. Whe
he heard us talking English 1t sud
j denly occurred to him that possibl
| he wasn't dead vet. so he stood u
to see and found himself not onl
alive but still whole"