Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 263, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1917 — UNDER FIRE IN FRENCH TRENCHES [ARTICLE]

UNDER FIRE IN FRENCH TRENCHES

Correspondent Describes Visit to Battle Line in Argonne Forest. NOISIEST THING IS BIRDS Germans Drop an Occasional Poprly Aimed Shell—Officer Calls It Dull Life—Visit Acceptable Break in Monotony of Daily Life. Somewhere in,France. —Just now the Argonne forest is no place for a man aching for a scrap. Vauquols Plateau, where thousands of French and Germans met death in bloody combat, is as-jiulet on these sunny autumn days as the Polo Grounds in midwinter. Barring—an occasional thunder roll from far away batteries, and an hourly reciprocal bombardment by French and German guns, the noisiest thing ' that stirs the valleys is the twitter of the birds. A young French officer, returning to his trench sector from a village a short distance behind the front, escorted three correspondents to a positlon from which a wide stretch of the Argonne front could be easily seen. Our car sped through an utterly deserted village, devastated by the retreating Germans after the battle of the Marne and more completely ruined by later bombardments. The road led straight out into a great amphitheater bordered by wooded hills, criss-crossed by the ruins of old trenches. Batteries In Woods. “See those sticks?” said our escort, pointing to a row plainly visible to the naked eye along the top of a hill to our left. “Therq are the Boches’ barbed wire and trenches. He has a few batteries In that woods. If he wa§ energetic he might give us a few shells.” The German positions were getting uncomfortably nearer. We left the car under a slight rise in the ground that hid it from German observation, and

started on foot across a field to seek cover behind a hill held by the French. We had barely clambered out of the car when a shell burst 6(10 yards ahead in a field near the road over which our car had been speeding. "Well, he did try one on us,” laughed the French officer, “but ft was a bad one. I’ll wire the kaiser to take away his Iron Cross.” Over in the dugouts behind the French trench line an assortment of poilus were whittling away at knicknacks, playing cards or taking cat naps. The dull boom of grins came across intervening < hills from the Ver*'' dun front, only a few kilometers away. Our escorting officer led the way on up over the hilltop past, qn anti-aircraft gunner who wished us “bonjour” and lamented because he hadn’t seen a German for many days. Calls It Dull Life. At an artillery observation post our coming was an event. The officer in charge confided that it was a dull life. The Germans hadn’t sent a shell his way for a long time. He was glad to meet newcomers and mighty glad to break the rtronotony of a day’s work by pointing out the Boche trenches in the valley below and the great Vauquois mine crater on the yellow side of Vauquols platehu. No sign of life came from trenchland. At one point where a V-shaped German trench seemed almost to tan into a V-shaped French trench —only 60 feet separated them—there had been a little grenade tossing a few hours earlier, w’hen poilus and Boches needed warming- up exercises after breakfast. That was all. Back we went to the officers’ dugout for quite palatable war bread and wine. “War out here,” he said as we were leaving, /‘moves like molasses.”