Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-09-15
No Wonder Germany Quit
By MAJOR FRANK @. MAHIN
OF the Army Recruiting Station
Honestly! the Unsuitable curiosity

Honestly! the Unsuitable curiosity
of the American is astounding.
Everything that happened some fool
had to go and stick his nose into
We had scores of cases of men blow
ing themselves up with hand gren1
ades, because-like the proverbial
small boy with a watch-they
wanted to see how the innards OF
the blamed thing worked. If
shell landed in the area and failed
to explode as likely as not some one
would get a hammer and chisel ana
try to knock the fuse off to see how
1T worked. Som etimes they sue
ceeded and sometimes they just dis
appeared. If a Boche sniper took a
shot at somebody, half dozen men
were sure to stick their fool beans
up over the parapet to see who was
doing the shooting. If the Boche
got in the habit of harassing a GER
tain stretch of road with machine
gun fire it was a fine game to see
If you could run along that stretch
without getting hit. And If any
body did get hit, everybody would
promptly forget that there was as
much danger as ever and would rush
up to see where Bill or Jack had
gotten it," l must admit shell fire
did not arouse any very undue
amount of curiosity when you hap
pened to be the recipient of said
fire, but anything else must be in
vestigated. l remember hopping
into a shell hole rather hastily one
morning to get out of the stream of
machine gun bullets coming my way
and found man already in the shell
hole. He was watching the edge of
woods interest
to see where the Boche were. 1 told
him he better get his head down
for minute or two, but he just
grinned at me. About that time a
bullet hit the edge of the rim of his
helmet right in front of his right
eye. The helmet saved his life, but
he nearly died of astonishment at
what happened. The shock knocked
him head over heels back into the
hole and when he sat up L found
the bullet had penetrated the rim of
the helmet up to the crown, had
then been detected and had pro-
ceeded to cut off the rim as neatly
as though it had been done with
big can opener. And there sat my
friend, blinking like an owl with d
little steel soup bowl set on top of
his head, and still wondering what
had happened. He was the funniest
looking sight 1 had seen in days.
But did he learn by experience?
Not he. He suddenly realized the
Boche had done something to him
that he ought to get even for and
that made him mad. UP he jumped,
out of the hole and started for the
Boche, soup bowl and all, and of
course, American curiosity over
coming my caution, 1 trailed along
too, to see what he was going to do.
Despite the fact that they all knew
they were liable to get blown up
going into a captured dugout before
the engineers had inspected it, every
fool Yank would beat it into every
Boche dugout he found, just to see
what was in it, and perhaps get
souvenir. The souvenir might be
the loss of an arm, or a good Swiss
watch, or just can of jam, but it
was a souvenir any way, and Curl
osity would be satisfied. Not only
was this curiosity rampant among
the troops, but it was, if possible,
even stronger among the nurses and
women Y. M. c. A. and Red Cross
workers. Every American woman
who was near the Front or could get
near the Front tried to work every
officer she met to take her up in the
trenches. OF course they were not
allowed to go except under excep-
tional circumstances. We had a
Y. M. c. A. girl worker with our
division, a Boston girl of a fine old
family, famous for its historians and
writer's. Finally she got permission
to come up into my sector as it was
entirely in German Alsace. l showed
her our headquarters, explained the
maps to her, described the organiZa-
ton of the sector and then took her
up into an observation post on the
top of a mountain, from which she
saw the distant Rhine, the whole
layout of our trenches and those of
the Boche. Then l tried to shake
her, but do you think she was salts
fed? Not much! She had her he'll
met and gas mask and she was go
ing right down into the front line
trenches and into the trenches she
went. She wanted to see how the
boys actually lived, she wanted to
see machine gun emplacements and
everything else and she saw a lot
of things. AS l led her along we
came to crossing and 1 remarked
we will go up over the shoulder of
the mountain and down. She asked
why not go straight through and
when l told her 1t was because the
Boche harassed that trench about
every fifteen minutes, she wanted to
know if we used it and she said she
would too. as she always wanted to
know what it w&s like to be under
real machine gun fire. ] held her
there arguing the question till the
Boche did their little trick and then
hurried her through before they
opened up again, so she missed out
L. lNs4 1,o
women haven't a bit more sense
than the men. is it any wonder the
Boche said we were all crazy and
what was the use of fighting luna
tics?