Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 201, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1915 — A SHELL THAT HIT [ARTICLE]

A SHELL THAT HIT

Graphic Description Penned by Frederick Palmer. One Successful Shell Out of a Thousand; the One Supposed to Make Waste of Other 999 Worth While.

By FREDERICK PALMER.

(International News Service.) British Headquarters, France. — There are points along the British front which see nothing but desultory shell fire and sniping for weeks and months on end; points where neither side has made an attack through the winter and spring. These are known as quiet corners. A practical stalemate exists. Neither Briton nor. German finds any object in trying for a gain. Troops who have been in the thick of it elsewhere are sometimes j sent to these regions for a rest and a change. Other points—points which stick out, sb it were —are known as “hot corners,” where the guns and rifles seem always busy. Such has been the La Bassee region. A visitor may see about as much of what is going on in La Bassee as an ant can see of the surrounding landscape when promenading in the grass. ♦The guns of both sides Beem engaged in a kind of savage, vindictive, blind man’s buff sparring. Of course, the gunners have a point on the map at which they are aiming. They have information in one way or another that there is something at this point worth shelling. It may be a house; and of course, every house is down on a large scale map. Troops may be in the house; or if they are not, and you destroy the house, you have destroyed shelter for troops and made the enemy nervous. At least, theoretically, have made him so; nothing seems to be able to make the British soldier actually so, or the French peasant either. We had left our car to go forward on foot. We were coming into the zone where the inhabitants had been ordered to vacate their homes. This is an unfailing sign that whatever the condition of your health you are becoming a poorer risk every minute for a life insurance company. A shell may get a group of soldiers in a house or in a dugout. Houses are not safe shelter in hot corners where the visitor, instead of looking for houses which have been damaged by shell fire, looks for the anomalous one that has not. There was one such on an adjoining road —an estaminet, which is a public drinking place or case. A stretcher was being borne into the door of this estaminet and above the doorway of the -estaminet was chalked some lettering which indicated that it was a first clearing station for the wounded. Lying on stretchers on the floor were some wounded men. They looked a little stunned, which was only natural when you have been as close as they had to a burst of a shell —a shell that made a hit. The concussion was bound to have this effect. A third man was the best illustration of shell destructiveness. Bullets make only holes. Shells make gouges, fractures and pulp. He too had a bandaged head, and had been hit in several places; but the worst wound was in the leg, where an artery had been cut, causing a loss of blood.-—He was weak with sort of a “Where am I?” look in his eyes. if that fragment which had hit his leg had hit his head or his neck or his abdomen he would have been killed instantly. He was an illustration of how hard it is to kill a man with several shell fragments unless some of them strike in the right place. For he was going to live; the surgeon had whispered that fact in his ear, that one important fact. And it was the one successful shell out'of the thousand; that one which was supposed to make the waste ot the other nine hundred and ninetynine worth while. Returning by the same road by which we came, an automobile passed swiftly by. We had a glimpse of the big. painted red cross on an ambulance side and. at the rear where the curtains were roiled up for yen-

tilation, of four pair of soldier bootsoles at the end of four stretchers which had been slid noiselessly Into place at the estaminet by the sturdy, kindly, experienced medical corps men. As we walked along, one of our guns of a battery near by smoked again in the course of-a desultory cannonade, seeking to pay back in kind for injuries which the four prostrate figures in the ambulance had received.