Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1915 — OFFICER SLAYS 15 [ARTICLE]

OFFICER SLAYS 15

Performs Daring Exploit With Homemade Bombs. Crawls-in Dark to German Trenches, Destroys Machine Gun and Kills Enemy’s Soldiers With Hand Grenades Made by Himself.

By FRANKLIN P. MERRICK.

International News Service Correspondent. Paris. —With three bombs made by himself, an officer of engineers of the British army has just performed an exploit worthy of chronicling. He crept up to the German trenches and killed 15 Germans, besides destroying a machine gun, ... i This sapper was stationed at a point of the battle line where the British and German trenches are near to each other. He fitted up a laboratory in a farm house in which he was quartered and here he began to manufacture hand grenades. These be decided to test personally. A few dozen yards before the first British line was a German trench iu which was posted a machine gun that had killed many English. The trench was cleverly built in sections, so that the British could not capture one point and then fire down the trench. It was like a row of oldfashioned church pews, each pew say six yards long with about five Germans in it. The machine gun was posted in a pew so situated that it could sweep the whole front for a long distance. Before it was a shield and a parapet. The British officer selected a time when it was quite dark and crawled carefully to within about a dozen yards of the machine gun’s position. He carried one of his homemade bombs in each side pocket and another in his hand. He hurled the first right In next to the machine gun. There was a terrific explosion and the single man In the trench to remain alive screamed with pain. The machine gun was hopelessly wrecked. The Germans along the line did not realize what had happened. The bold sapper was not content with tho damage he had wrought, so instead of crawling back to safety, he leaped infb the trench with the machine gun »md the dead and dying Germans. The compartments of the trench were connected by passageways, making an angle. The Germans in the compartment next to that of the machine gun were in an uproar, firing in the direction of the British lines and evidently believing...the allies were delivering a general attack. The Englishman hurled his Becond bomb among them. Five or six Germans were torn to shreds. Into the second compartment the sapper crawled and cast this third and last bomb into the next group along the line. The effect was a* great ns before. To clear opt the time eompart"metfts of "the crefihh'had' been the' work of not more than three minutes.

After completing his task, the officer wriggled back to his own lines unharmed.