Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 144, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1917 — VAST ACTIVITIES IN CAMPS OF BRITISH BEHIND FIGHTING LINE [ARTICLE]

VAST ACTIVITIES IN CAMPS OF BRITISH BEHIND FIGHTING LINE

Thousands Upon Thousands of Motor Lofries in Constant Streams Supply Fighters at Front With Munitions —British Flying Corps Enjoy Most Thrilling Experiences % of Any Soldiers in France.

By JAMES M. TUOHY.

his returning. But to these dauntless young fellows—most of them are quite young—aviation with all Its deadly risks is the grandest sport ever conceived by man. They go out to seek battle, in defiant challenge to all the most perfected Boche resources of defense and attack, and they undoubtedly meet the most wonderful and thrilling individual experiences of any men engaged in this war. No sooner do they get within range of the German lines than shrapnel begins to burst all around them. In the distance the shrapnel bursts seem to be In a bunch so close to the plane that you hold your breath with anxiety, expecting to see it dashed to the earth. But these young sportsmen are skilled as well as dauntless They maneuver with 'amazing coolness amid the missiles hurled at them, and as the British now have a machine that gives no points to the best the Boche can put in the air either in swiftness or handiness, they extricate themselves from what seems like certain death time after time.

(New York World Correspondent.) At the British Front In France.— War takes no account of the Sabbath. They toil and fight seven days a week nt the front. Not only laws but dogmas are silenced by the guns. It happened that we visited Arras on a Sunday. The whole countryside from the base up to the front was alive with movement. Motoring for hours along the broad, straight, switchback French roads you found them groaning under the heavy traffic of war supplies. Ponderous motor lorries dominated the scene —lorries in hundreds, lorries In thousands. One stream was going up, another stream coming down. The automobile picked its way as well as It could in between, and at cross roads one found Brit-; Ish traffic orderlies keeping the streams moving in regulated procession, just as the London policeman does at the Bank of England or Regent Circus. Otherwise the confusion and delays would be Interminable; and delay in sending up supplies to a fighting army might be a fatal business. In the course of some days motoring up to various points on the British fighting line, over roads literally packed with all sorts of vehicles —lorries, buses full of soldiers, ammunition wagons drawn by teams of mules, guns with their gun carriages, from the handy field piece to the .mammoth howitzer, traction engines—and never once did we see a tie-up. Everything was going forward or coijilng back with absolute smoothness, the whole complicated organization working with clockwork precision. Vast Camps Behind Line. At frequent Intervals along these roads you came upon camps of all sorts —soldiers’ camps, veterinary camps, vast motor garages, mule corrals, supply camps, repair camps, draft horse inclosures, munition depots, parks of artillery, hospital camps and occasionally cages for German prisoners. Everything required by the modern army Is to be seen In the utmost profusion, with order and system the presiding deities. This does not apply merely to the road to Arras, but to all the other highways throughout the whole of the army zone. Khakl~ is the prevailing hue. The British soldier permeates the whole region, and save in the towns and villages the French inhabitants — only the old and the very young—are rarely to be seen. Not only the roads but the railway lines are working at top pressure in the business of the war. It is curious to see trains of English cars drawn by English engines running on the French tracks. The amalgamation between the tw T o races in their joint effort to conquer the Boche seems to be complete. Shopkeepers Coin Money. Needless to say, the shopkeepers are coining money out of this friendly army of occupation. On this Sunday evening, when the men from the reserve camps had finished their day’s work, they were flocking Into nearest towns for a few hours’ relaxation at a case or a cinema. They are perfectly at home among their continental surroundings, and in nothing has their adaptiveness displayed itself so quickly as In their assimilation of the free-and-easy atmosphere of the French. Next to the vastness and variety of this military concentration, with all its endless ramifications, you are impressed by the confident spirit of the army. Whether the Tommy 13 strolling about In his hours of ease far from the fighting line, marching with his heavy pack along the dusty road, or under shell fire In his reserve camps up close to the front, where any minute a Boche projectlie may land In his midst, he Is doing his task with a bright countenance, liltlug the last favorite song from the music halls, going on his perilous way with a light heart.

Presently British shrapnel puffs were to be seen bursting slightly to our left, and away up at a tremendous height, so that It looked like a white pigeon, a Boche plane was discovered in the blue between the flying clouds. It looked to be flying at twice the altitude the British aviators reached when taking their hazardous course over the German lines. As the shrapnel was scattered on all sides of it and two British planes were rapidly making their way upward to engage it, the Boche plane dashed into a cloud and was lost for a minute. Then It emerged again, coming right over our heads, and as the shrapnel puffs continued to pursue it we found It prudent, though we lm<j our steel helmets am to placeMXurselves conveniently tou\formtfr ITiin dugout In case the Zplinte?s-cffpe-42Jir Way. Germap/Flier Flees. The situation had now evidently become too hot for the taste of the German flier, especially as three British planes were approaching, so he turned about and plunged behind a great cloud and made his way home — at least we did not catch sight of him any more. This was the only Boche plane that came within reach or ventured over the British line during the couple of hours we were on the battlefield, while in the same time British planes were sailing over the German positions in the teeth of death every few minutes. On this battlefield we visited the only disabled tank that was to be found, though the Germans seem to have claimed several. The cause of its disablement was plain. It was not direct German gun-fire, but such a rare complication of deep craters and ruptured trenches that its traveling bands could find no sufficient hold, so that It was forced to a standstill. Tlie track of Its caterpillar feet was visible for hundreds of yards back, and the obstacles it overcame seemed hardly less formidable than those that proved Its undoing. It looked as if a twenty-loot-down German dugout, already penetrated by British shell fire, Rad caved In under its weight. - Every tank has his day, and this one evidently ended up tn the thickest of the fight, judging by the frightfully contorted condition of the ground all around it. Full justice has been done by the cinema to these grotesque im-

Among the officers the sporting spirit, in which they take their part, is beyond admiration. When you hear, perhaps, a young fellow of twenty-five talking about the ‘strafes’ he was in 18 months ago—when ammunition, unlike these times, was dangerously scarce —and you see two or three wound stripes on his arm, and the pursuit of the war seems to be the one absorbing object of his life, you are lost In wonder. But nothing Is more inspiring at the front than the hourly heroism of the Royal Flying corps. The Sunday we visited the Arras battlefield it was bright sunshine, with some white clouds far aloft, and, as the communiques say, there was ‘considerable activity’ above and below. ' Odds Against Them. As far as the aviators were concerned this meant that every few minutes two or three planes were seen soaring away over the German lines, some on bombing expeditions, others for observation and photographic purposes. Every one of these fliers went out with the odds decidedly against

plements of modern warfare, but to appreciate the position of the crews who work them it Is necessary to see Into their grisly “Innards” —a dense mass of machinery, with the tiniest spaces for the men to control the engines, the steering gear and the guns. The demolition of the French villages through which the Germans are hacking their way home is appalling. Rarely Is there a trace of them left beyond heaps of brick and mortar. A Spanish artist had come with us to sketch the ruins. At Souchez It was impossible, for there was nothing left; at Ypres shell time was at hand and our guide could not sanction his 'delaying anywhere near the cathedral or the Cloth hall, but on the Arras field we came across a windmill which had been knocked into a picturesque cocked hat at some crossroads, so the Spaniard took out his sketching board to transfer the melancholy object to paper. In about a minute two long distance Boche shells sang over our heads and fell less than two hundred yards away. Immediately afterward a gunner officer appeared from the bowels of the earth and said that this was not a ‘healthy’ spot, as It was a registered point for the German guns and two shells had struck there that morning. So the artist folded up his board and we moved on without any. undue delay. The city of Arras itself, to which we now directed our course. haff not suffered to anything like the same extent as Ypres. Here are still the semblance of streets, some of the bulk of them shot through and through. The cathedral, of course, and the beautiful town hall, being conspicuous and valued objects, though of no military Importance, specially attracted the Boche gunners. They seem to have shelled them with the same fiendish delight as the famous buildings of Ypres. The great square, with Its picturesque colonnaded sixteenth 'century houses of the Spanish period, has suffered less than one expected—not because of any tenderness on the part of the enemy, but owing to its situation giving It protection against his guns.