Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 169, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1916 — IN BATTLE ONE GETS TO IMAGINE HE IS IMMUME [ARTICLE]

IN BATTLE ONE GETS TO IMAGINE HE IS IMMUME

Cannot Seem to Realize That If You Are Killed You Are Dead. REVENGE IS RULING PASSION Capt Morton Webber, Twice Wounded in Three Campaigns With Allies, Discusses Psychology of Battle—Tells How He Outwitted Clever Woman Spy. New York. —A man dressed in wellcut clothes limped into the Rocky Mountain club. He was Capt. Morton Webber of the Royal field artillery, who 18 months ago bade good-by to his club friends when he went off to fight for the British empire. Yesterday he was glad to be In a city of peace, but at the same time there seemed to be a trace of sorrow now and again in his demeanor, caused perhaps through his being physically incapacitated and therefore for the time being unable to rejoin his regiment. Captain Webber is the type of soldier who dislikes to talk about what he has seen. It was difficult to draw from him details of his experiences at the front. In fact, it was only through a good friend of the British officer that in his enthusiasm for Great Britain he said something about the three campaigns in which he had fought. If Captain Webber had had his own way this story would have read: “First 1 got a commission. Then I went to France and afterward to Alexandria, Gallipoli and the Balkans. Now I’m here.” Captain Webber is a consulting engineer, an expert Q,n mine valuation. He gave up a comfortable income without an iota of regret to go to England.

That Ypres Salient “Ten days after I landed in England,” said Captain Webber, “I received a commission in the Royal field artillery. Previous to that I had told them that I was accustomed to handling men, as I had been doing so for about twelve years. I said that I was giving up a good living and that if they did not want me I would stay for two weeks in Devonshire and then return to the United States. “Then I '‘went to France,” he continued. “I was laid out there at Hill No. 60 on the Ypres salient.” Apparently this was final with Captain Webber and I then said: “Tell me what happened.” “Oh, we practically got wiped out. It was a bloody fight. One of the noticeable things about the fighting (and there’s no secret In telling this, because I would not discuss anything of military value) was how qyich the operations were dependent on artillery control. An attack cannot be followed up without the guns. Artillery domination, has, of course, long since been appreciated by both sides. Psychology of Battle.

“You see so much on the battlefield that you are absolutely detached from yourself, especially after you have lost half your men. You can’t realize that if you are killed you are dead. Somehow or other you get to Imagine you are immune, but you always have the feeling, after you see one man and then another drop, that you want to take it out on the enemy. I was scuppered—laid out —and was taken off the battlefield. With able medical attendance it was not long before I recovered, and then I was sent to Alexandria and from there to Gallipoli. I was at Gallipoli from June to September, when our brigade was lent to a French general and we were sent on the original Balkan expedition. We drove the Bulgars across the Vardar to their own country, but owing to the collapse of the Serbian army, which exposed our flank, we were forced to fall back on ' Salonikl, and in the rear guard actions our battery and another were sacrificed tn order to get the infantry out

of the passes. Then I was taken to the hospital and here I am.” Again there was a finality to his tone. “Tell us some more detail,” said his listeiffers. There was a Civil war veteran, a young college graduate and a Canadian financier In the room. All wanted something more out of Captain Webber: * Outwitting a Woman. “You are very exacting,” he said. "But I do remember something about a German spy. The spy was a woman. She was a wonder as to looks and attire, and I was introduced to her one day In Alexandria. She was full of thought for the British army. She asked me to accept a lift in her automobile. I did. At that time I had our guns close to the yacht club to train on the breakwater. The yacht races were still going on every day near the club and fashionably dressed women with escorts frequented the / place. This woman often asked me to take a ride in her automobile. She could drive well and fast. Then one day she surprised me. “ ‘Where’s your observation station?’ she asked.

“It was a question which would have been unusual from a man who was not in the army and about the last thing for a woman to ask. As a matter of ‘fact the observation station was in a lighthouse, but as I looked at her pretty eyes I lied and told her that it was in the steeple of the English church. After that I found that she did not come around to the club and I had no more automobile rides. I was always waiting for a four-inch submarine gun to biff that church. “We were going to be interned, so the Greeks told us, if we retired within their gates. Perhaps we might have been, except for the presence suddenly of ten British warships. They cleared for action and after that there was no more talk about interning us. An Ignorant “Doctor.” “It was in Salonlkl that I came across another German spy. I was accosted in a store by a man who wore a uniform of the Royal Army Medical corps. He asked me where I had been wounded and 1 gave him the medical name for the thigh bone. I soon saw that he did not know whether I had been hit in the head or the foot. He came from Yorkshire, he said. But he lacked the accent. I went to a case with him and sent an urgent request for the provost marshal and soon the man was escorted away.

“On another occasion a spy In Salon! kl got within our lines and lighted a bonfire. This was against orders and at dawn we realized from the dropping of shells that the spy had given the enemy our position. The enemy guns were behind a ridge. We

waited for them and worked out their position carefully, but could not exactly determine their distance until an unexploded shell arrived. It was set for 4.900 meters and marked by the Krupp firm. That night we waited until they were firing again and then suddenly, knowing all their men were at the guns, we let them have three battery salvos of high explosive shells. We heard their ammunition boxes blow up, and afterward we heard nothing from that direction. “You talk about fights and battles and ask what I remember. I’ll tell yon what impressed Itself on my mind more than anything else. It was a giant kiltie. He must have been champing at the bit before they let him out of the trenches by the way he went for the Germans. He was so strong that he drove part of the barrel of his gun, with the bayonet, into one of the enemy. He could not extricate his gun. I then saw this Scot reach down and pick up the German’s weapon and with that he killed the man who was seeking to avenge the death of the first German. “That time, too, the bayonet went in too far. Nothing loath, this brawny kiltie grabbed a third man’s gun. A Discord of Fighting. “We got a present of a piano for our mess in Gallipoli. We did not get much of a chance to try It out, because the first night It was tuned up for the evening a high explosive shell swung right into it and the next month we were continually picking up keys. “It’s hard to have any conception of the amount of lead, iron and copper that is being shot into the ground and which can’t be recovered. An idea of this can be gathered when it is realized that solely through allied buyings, copper has risen from a normal 13 and 14 cents to 28 cents. And lead, which has a normal price of 3 to 4 cents, now Is up to 8% cents. Remember that Germany requires just as much as the allies, which she Is unable to get because of the British fleet, and it’s only a question of time before she begins to feel the pinch. “I should say that the greatest strategical masterpiece of the war was that the allies bad not tried ‘a Verdun.' There It Is common knowledge that four Germans have been killed tor every Frenchman. The Germans are bound to do something for a moral effect We don’t require that It’s merely a question of time before the German’s waste of human element Is going to beat him. The kaiser is suffering enormous losses for purely spectacular reasons. Our public does not require to be buncoed. “People don’t realize what Great Britain has had to do. First she sent over an expeditionary force of 160,000, and while fighting she has simultaneously increased her army to 5,000,000 men to terminate the war. I have never yet met an officer of one of our allies tvho has not told me that Great Britain would be keeping up her end on the sea alone and that she really was not counted upon for land fighting. “As to the outcome of the conflict I have not the least doubt. My only fear is that we’U settle too cheaply. We should remember to keep studiously in mind the debt we owe to the fellows lying under the sod.”