Norwich bulletin., 1919-08-30
noN PllIlIIAlI lI ! M . 4kpE 7 {! IS AtRlgltx

8Feh pom W1sf 1an elfor- Kmoua bar of steel The F-relichrnan, foil, chipped away at dynamo. When we got to the wells we rushed the
 work Some of the men had opened what they called "a thread" and they benzine came out in floods, forming lake twenty. centimeters deep. wash F ing out the buildings and cleaning out the machines, the towers and thesd sdy- names. Someone struck match and Ea powerful flame roaredt toward ts1e sky. "Ah. hal" said a workman, sthe Bocher won't get that rones,
 ,s At the seats; of the. cornpanfes in the valleys of the Dambovitza ahd the Prohova- gangs were hard at work. destroying the bores; the reservoirs and. the rehneries, firing the Suam-
 moth wood piles and the material piled up; for use in. building derrfcks It. was not all plain sailing. a few mayors and adninistrators of neutral capital opposed. our work. But we made -fhem understand that the Boches. were close at hand and that we had no time to lose.
 We did not work willingly: We had waited until; we were sure that we must either ruin the fields or give k them to the ;BOches. During the awful hours of that appalling time we were the Germans. We worked between two affnfeA. We had no means of
 knowing what was looming. We had
 lie hope of succor. At last we were so
 hard pressed that our only chance lay
 in plugging the ebores. l.. It+was a. contemplate way. of work ing-we were all agreed. as to that But what else could we do? t AS one man we<fells to. < . . . Work
 men, engineers and bosses. We flew
 at the slender bores with trepans, with chains, with iron bars. with picks. We
 forced in all the tools abandoned by | Al -..@k k~sy < ~t |
 Everything in sight went in and at
 last the spout was nothing but here
 and there a drop of ooze. Then we
 were glad We knew that. work as
 gle hard before they could get out all
 we had forced in.
 Wells of a depth of 300 meters (cost S5.000 francs) and wells from TOO to
 1000. meters deep. (cost from 1s0.000 to 25e.0o francso were destroyed in
 have fired well with one match. but
 we were not thinking of saving our matches. More than once we heard the roar of the German army only coming, for the oil and it was. up to us i to get-rid of it before they got there. What blowup! Some of the 'reser- voirs held 10000 cubic. meters of oil cubic meters. Some burned like torches. exploding so slowly that. we had plenty of time to get away. and there were sudden explosions and slabs of metal plate. hundreds Of tons in weight, arose in the air to come crashing down, with us fellows run ming with all our legs.
 | Once, on one of those days. half blind and giddyt I staggered and feil on the talus of lake of blazing oil. ' thought all. was .over.-* |. I made a supreme effort: one of my cornra les pushed he upward and I found my self. !, We went from one place, to another ito Bacoi. to Campina, to Bushtenari, to Conarnic. to Do6ano, to Grausi,eir, to Nrajitoarea, to Tintra-and U a hundred other fields. We set fire to the valleys. and when night came the Sky was red with our work. A: Grus- hor, where we plugged 170 wells .brifn full the deep layers of oil exploded and a flaming cloud. driven by the wind fell on gypsy Village. If homesick darfne had hei> Sor:ie of Che gypsfes in. they little houses they must have smothered in their braz .e-.s. We destroyed more than s0.000 wa gons of kenzine and petroleuri at a ! cost of over one milliard francs. Rl- maniass sacrifice to military De,ces- sityi-