Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 235, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1915 — GRAPHIC PICTURE OF THE RETAKING OF MINE CRATER [ARTICLE]

GRAPHIC PICTURE OF THE RETAKING OF MINE CRATER

Frederick Palmer Describes One of Most Picturesque Actions on British Front BAG GERMANS IN NOVEL WAY Thunders of Artillery 4 Duel Heard Many Miles In Rear —British Officers Enthusiastic Over Work of Big Guns—Fight Without Thought of Cost. By FREDERICK PALMER. (International News Service., British Headquarters, France. —The British have retaken the mine crater at Hooge in one of the most pictur-. esque actions which has happened along the British front for a long time, without counting the novel way in which a bag of prisoners was made. Hooge is the name of what was once a village in a region as fiat as a billiard table. It is in the Ypres salient. As for the nature of life in the Ypres salient there is the testimony of German prisoners who say that when a man on their side is assigned to it the saying is that he may consider himself as good as lost. It is generally agreed that more blood has been spilled in the Ypres salient than over any similar of line on the western front, with the exception of Souchez, where the French made their . reat attack in May and June.

The blowing up of a mine under the German trench some weeks ago made Hooge about the hottest point in the Ypres salient. It was one of the largest mines the British had ever exploded to begin with, and it made a hole in the earth about 40 feet deep and 70 feet across. The British charged in and took possession of it. In reply to the mine the Germans brought up their flame ejector apparatus, which they had tried on the French before but now used on the English for the first time. Meanwhile around the edge of the crater the two sides were only five feet apart at one place. The crater was so big, and it had so disfigured the landscape that it was very difficult to “consolidate the position” as the official bulletins say, particularly when showers of bombs from either side punished any enterprise on the part of the other. On top of a bombardment with artillery of all the neighboring part of the ’ British line where the trenches were close together, the Germans suddenly sprayed the British front 4rith Are over a section where their infantry attacked. The British had to give up their crater and Hooge, too, and some 500 yards of trench. When they set out to recover it at first they found the Germans had the line bristling with machine guns, so they got back one end of what they lost.

Reck Not the Cost. The rule in the Ypres salient seems to bq never to lie down tamely under any setback. Both sides fight to recover a loss, no matter what the cost. Sanguinary battles are waged for few acres of ground. All one day the British kept an almost continuous roar of shells over other parts of the salient. They made the German trenches boll with dust under clouds of shrapnel smoke. The German guns replied. They threw in some more 17-inch shells into the ruins of Ypres and into other points which they had not considered worthy of 17-inch attention before. The thunder of this artillery duel could be heard 30 and 40 miles to the rear. It made a sound like the roll of a drum with almost no intervals between the shots. Nothing heavier had been heard since Souchez. About two the next morning guns

which had been silent before came into action. They all directed on the German trenches at Hooge tons of high explosive and storms of shrapnel. Then at 4:15 by all the watches of gunners and Infantrymen, the guns stopped. The next minute a British major at the head of a battalion line leaped over the parapet. As he said, he found “nobody home.” The Germans were in the dugouts according to the custom on such occasions, taking shelter from the tornado of shell fire which makes even a lookout hardly possible. Turning the corner of a traverse the major fairly bumped into a German who apparently had come out of his dugout to see whether the shelling had s opped. “You’re mine,” said the major, putting his revolver muzzle to the German’s breast. “He promptly answered that he was,” as the major expressed it. Praise for the Artillery.

The happiness of the officers and men as they told the story of that fight to the correspondent turned on gratitude to their artillery support. “It shows what artillery can do,” said the colonel, “and what the infantry can do when the guns give them that kind of aid. Their work was perfectly straight on there in front of the men’s noses with no shells bursting short and then they all stopped like an orchestra at the end of a piece. My only trouble with the men wad to hold them back from the front line. If there is anything that puts spirit into the men it is that kind of support. We got four good machine guns, and I don’t know how many were destroyed. “Germany is one big battery. She does it with artillery and machine guns. Guns against her guns and we shall be all right. Yes, we had a fine show.”' f *

He kept on speaking of the guns, and as he did so, sordid the other officers and men with the depth of feeling expressive of realization that the guns meant life and death and success and failure for them. Singularly enough the British loss in taking the trench was less than losing it. They got about a thousand yards with the first rush. Mostly they met the Germans coming from their dugouts, and it was hand to hand when the Germans did not yield. As soon as they had yielded they were started back toward the British rear, for in the maze of traverses where rifles and bombs are lying about loose prisoners may soon renew the fray. The next day a faint rumble like that of & human voice came from a pile of earth and it was found that one of the high explosives had closed the floor of a dugout. The occupants were rescued alive.

When an officer and some men came to the edge of the mine crater they found nearly a hundred Germans in the bottom of it where they had taken cover from the bombardment. The British looked down at the Germans and the Germans looked up at the British, As one of the men said, the surprise was mutual, but the Germans were a little the more surprised of the two. The British had bombs in their hands. All they had to do was to stand back and toss the bombs into the crater.

Chucking bombs into a dugout when the occupants will not surrender is one of the commonest proceedings in the course of taking a trench. “We’ll give ourselves up," said a German officer, starting up the wall of the crater. “You’ve got us.” Shake Hands With Foe. As the Germans came up some of the British shook hands with them; and soon they were marching along a road in the midst of German shell fire, smoking cigarettes given them by their captors. Meanwhile it was stab and thrust in other places till Briton or German was down. One British soldier told how he felled a German with his fist. "I was out of bombs,” he explained. “So I give him my right and he went down for the count.” Rushing up the traverses the British drove the Germans before them with bombs, gaining more ground. In addition to their own bombs, they used the Germans’. ■ ; "One German prisoner showed me how to use them,” said a British bombthrower. "He did it instinctively

when he saw 1 was fumbling with it. That was very helpful of him. You had to pull a string on top before you made the throw. They seemed to be first-rate bombs.” Once over the demoralization caused by the crash of the bursting sheila from the British artillery concentration in their ears, the Germans, out of their dugouts, began resisting with bombs. The British, running short had to fall back traverse by traverse, pursued by the Germans, thus losing some of their gain before more bombs were brought up from the rear. This had to be done under gusts of shrapnel bullets, for now the German guns were giving the British supports all they had to give, and as fast as they could. The struggle proceeded in the midst of the scream and bursting of projectiles. Twice one of the sergeants crossed the zone back to the support trenches bringing supplies of bombs before he was killed. Others were at the same work, and many were killed and wounded, but they got enough up to hold 1,200 yc.rds of trench.