Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1918 — KEPT THEM MOVING [ARTICLE]

KEPT THEM MOVING

English Major Mas Machine Gun Crew on the Jump. About as Little Uncertainty In His Orders as There Are Polite Phrases In the Language He Employed In Issuing Them. I make my way through the thick brush at Camp Upton to a machine gun range, guided by the intermittent staccato chatter of a Colt and hoping that rm not by any chance wandering on to the private reserve of any busy bullets, William Slavens McNutt writes in Collier’s. I come out of the woods on the rear of the gun position. Near a big campfire a dozen or more American officers are grouped around two machine guns listening to the instructions of an English major. The English officer is a short, spare, peppery veteran with a raspy voice that he can use for the same purpose that a mule skinner uses a biacksnake.

“Burr-wuss!” he shouts. That’s as near as I can get to it phonetically. Two captains leap to their places by the machine gun. The one who sights and operates the piece throws himself flat on his back with head cradled on the knees of the man feeding. There Is some slight delay and the English major breaks into song. “Come, come I Carry on I What are we waiting for? You should have ■killed a hundred by now. What is it? What is it? My word I Not so slow. We’re not having dinner, you know; we’re killing Boches. What the blink-ety-blank’s wrong now? Come, cornel Carry on I Carry on 1” The gun speaks jarringly. One side of the barrel spits a stream of yellow cartridge cases over the breast of the operator holding the trigger. Three hundred yards distant the blade of bullets slices the ground before the target and throws up a little line of dust The major orders a fifty yard advance. The American officers dismount the piece, go forward at the double-quick and set it up once more. The operator pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He fusses and tugs. Still no result. The ’English major calms himself and heaves a deep sigh. He looks at the gun crew like a man with no Insurance viewing a total loss. “Oh, my eye 1” he groans sadly. “How dead you’d have been by now! All right, leave off, leave off 1 Never mind.” He points to the man who carried the ammunition and who is standing behind the gun curiously watching the efforts of the crew to make it shoot. “Next time don’t stand up behind the gun. You stick up there like a dummy in a shop. window. A body would think you were an advertisement for something. You’re not trying to sell the gun to the Boches, you know. Standing there giving away the gun position I Next time find cover twenty paces to the right or left and try to act like a bit -of mud. Yes!”