Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1915 — TELLS OF RIDE ON ARMORED TRAIN [ARTICLE]

TELLS OF RIDE ON ARMORED TRAIN

Quns Snuffing Line as Cars Crawl on Reminds Observer of Dogs on Scent. RAILROAD BRIDGE IS BLOWN UP “Fragments Tear the Sunlit Sky for Instant,” Then Slaughter Is Resumed. Paris. —Remarkable work is being done by armored trains in this war. An observer who was aboard one of these death-dealing devices on a foray near the German lines gives the following description: “As the train approached the river under Bhell fire, the car is cracking with the constant thunder of our guns on board, right, left, ahead. It is amazing the angle through which the guns can be swung, north and south, in view of the frail support that the bogey cars can maintain against the recoil in any direction but straight ahead. “Overhead passes the continual shriek and whine of shell and projectile; from the enemy; from our own flank —cross firing from our own ships —raking the country diagonally above our heads. Overhead, again every now and then, the whirl and moan of the rival aeroplanes, almost disregarded now in the general present of peril. “Beside us, as we crawl up, snuffing the line with our guns like dogs on a scent, the grim trainloads of wounded wait soundlessly in sidings. Further up, the lines of ambulances are running slowly back. The bullets of machine guns begin to rattle on our armor coat Like dogs on a hot scent the guns lift their noses and bay, we are racing in view. “Now and again there is a shout from a mitraillueuse car rearing through the lanes. The stormy petrols of this war, led by their dautless chief, the ‘bravest of the brave,' they have been known to rush in ahead, alone, upon a whole battalion of Germans and sweep them from wood or ambuscade. Not only once has a single car swept past in front of a .large body of our finest troops and saved them, by furious pace and deadly fire, from being cut off and destroyed by a larger German force in ambush. Shells we learn to disregard. But the machine gun Is master of this war. “The Germans are over on our bank, enfilading lines of our allies’ trenches. Steadily we creep by. The noise and turmoil of explosion is Inextricably mingled. No time to distinguish between the death falling round us and the death we dispatch. Perhaps our fire has turned the scale. The Germans dip into sight out of 4h j trenches, crush to the bank, scattered and smashed by pursuing hail of iron. “Our allies are after them with a fierce bayonet charge. They never wait for it On to the bridge, and now swept away by the deadliest destroyer of all, the protected machine guns, bubbling demoniacally from the entrenchments. “Ten minutes, half an hour of furious fire and counter-fire from either bank; and comes a deafening thunder. The bridge is blown up—by us? By the enemy? By projectiles or dynamite? Who can say? Vapor, smoke and fragments tear the sunlit sky and precede an instant’s interruption and startling silence in the long monotony of thundering sound. Then it begins again. “Only a narrow river between. On’ this side our raised bank and trench, on that side theirs. A head raised, a hand exposed for an instant and a man sinks forward or slips down. Quick as they fall they are dragged back till the pile waiting for the stretchers seems inconceivable. Others come up the line and take their place, in this nerve-shattering sound and presence of death it seems almost as inconceivable that men can be found to do 1L But dhere is never a pause. “We are told we are winning here. The enemy is, beyond the river; we hear later that he is back four miles. Four miles! Dug out of the sentient vitality of human bodies of civilized brains.”