Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 196, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1915 — WHEN LIFE GROWS INTERESTING AND DEATH MUCH MODE LIKELY [ARTICLE]

WHEN LIFE GROWS INTERESTING AND DEATH MUCH MODE LIKELY

Night Visit to the Trenches Interestingly Described by Frederick Palmer—When the Human Soldier Fox Comes Out of His Warren and Sneaks Forth on the Lookout for Prey—Flares of Light Only Evidence of Proximity of Hostile Force.

By FREDERICK PALMER.

International News Service. British Headquarters, France. —night Is always the time in the trenches when life grows more interesting and death more likely. “It’s dark enough, now,” said the young officer , who was my host. “W«*l go out with the patrol.” By day the slightest movement of the enemy is easily and instantly detected; the light keeps the combatants to the warrens which protect them from shell and bullet fire. At night there is no telling what mischief the enemy may be up to. At night you must depend upon the ear rather than the eye for watching. Then the human soldier fox comes out of his warren and sneaks forth on the lookout for prey. At night both sides are on the prowl. "Trained owls would be the most valuable scouts ,we could have,” said the young officer. “They would be more useful than aeroplanes in locating the enemy’s gun positions. A properly reliable owl would come back and say a German patrol was out in the wheat field at such a point and we would wipe out that German patrol with a machine gun.” These young officers who fill the gaps left by the old, do not leave their fancy behind when they enter the trenches. We turned into a side trench —an alley off the main street leading out of the front tow r ard the Germans. '‘“Anybody out?” he asked a soldier who was on guard at the end of it. “Yes, two.” Prowling In Paris. Of course, there were two anyhow. All prowling is done in pairs at least. One man' can help his comrade if he is wounded or bring back the news if he is dead. It is the business of every man on guard to know where the patrol goes, so as not to fire in that direction.

Sometimes a patrol hears a fusillade from both sides sweeping past him. “Follow me.” We climbed out of the ditch and stooped low. We were in the midst of a tangle of barbed wire protecting the trench front which was faintly visible in the hedge, as it were, kept open for just such purposes as this. When the patrol returned it closed the gate again. “Look out for that wire—just there. Do you see it?” “Everything to keep the Boches oft our front lawn except ‘Keep oft thb grass,’ signs.” It was utterly still—a warm summer’s night without a catspaw of breeze stirring. Through the dark curtain of the sky in a parabola rising from the German trenches swept a brilliant sputter of red light—one of the flares which the Germans used by the millions to assist them in their night watches. Machine guns, mortars, bombs, flares and guns of all calibers — the Germans keep everything in their locker in mechanical appliances which will economize human force. Thiß was coming as straight toward us as Hit had been aimed at us. It cast a searching, uncanny red glare over the tall wheat in hehd between the trenches. “Get down,” whispered the officer. Just Take the Hint. It seemed sort of foolish to grovel before a piece of fireworks. There was no firing in our neighborhood, nothing to indicate a state of war between the British empire and Germany, no visual evidence oi' any German army anywhere in France except that flare. However, if a guide who knows as much about war as this one knew, says to get down when you are out between two lines of machine guns and rifles —between the fighting powers of England and Germany—you take the hint. The flare sank into the earth a few yards away after a last insulting ugly fling of red light in our faces. “What if we had been seen?”

“They’d have combed the wheat in this neighborhood thoroughly—and they might have got us.” “It’s hard to believe,” I suggested. So it was, he agreed. That was the exasperating thing about it. Always hard to believe, perhaps, until after all the cries of wolf the wolf came—until after nineteen flares the twentieth revealed to the watching enemy the figure of a man above the wheat when a dozen rifles and perhaps a machine gun suddenly broke the silence of night by concentrating on a target. Then there might be another name on the British casualty list, which meant an able-bodied officer or soldier whom his country had trained was transferred from the asset to the liability column of the ledger. Keeping cover from German flares is a part of the minute, painstaking economy of wax. i Ever on the Watch. We crawled on slowly through the wheat, taking care to make no noise till we brought up behind two soldiers lying flat on the earth with their rifles in hand ready to Are instantly. It was their business not only to see the enemy first, but to shoot first —and to capture or kill any German patroL The officer sp&ke to them; they answered. It was unnecessary for them to say that they had not seen anything. If they had we qhould have known it. He was out there less to scout himself than to make sure that they were

an the Job. that they knew how to watch. The visit was a part of hi* routine As we were on cosiness we did not even whisper. Preferably all the whispering would be done by any German patrol out to have a look at onr barbed wire—and that would give the Germans away. Silence and the - starlight and the-dew-moist wheat; but yes, there was war. You heard gun fire half a mile, perhaps a mile away, and raising your head you saw the auroras of light from bursting shells. At intervals, as if set by clock work with Teutonic system, flares rose from the-German trenches. We heard at our backs faintly snatches of talk from our trenches and faintly in front the talk from the German trenches —which sounded rather inviting and friendly from both sides, like that around some camp fire on the plains. Visiting Not In Order. It seemed quite within the bounds of probability that you might have crawled on over and said: “Howdy” to the Germans; but before you could present your visiting card, and by the time you reached the edge of their barbed wire, if not sooner, you would have been shot into a pulp. This was just the kind of a diversion from trench monotony the Germans were looking for. “Well, shall we go back?” asked the officer. There seemed no particular purpose! in spending the. night flat on the earthi looking into a wall of wheat with your! ears cocked like a pointer dog. Be-i sides, he had other duties to attend to,! this pleasant, alert youngster who had: left, home to fight and die for England,, exacting duties laid down by the col- 1 onel as the result of trench experiencei in his responsibility for the command! of a company of men. , It happened as we crawled back intoi the trench that a fury of shots broke out from a point along the line two or three hundred yards away—vicious, sharp shots on the still night air—stabbing, merciless death in their 1 sound. Oh, yes, there was war in France, unrelenting, shrewd, tireless, war. A touch of suspicion anywhere along that quiet trench —and a swarm i of hornets poured forth.