OCR Text |
Show HILL TELLS OF SUE inpEi Special Correspondent Describes De-scribes Ghastly Fields and Haunting Horrors of Death's Harvest. ROADSIDE STREWN WITH DEAD BODIES Mound With Cross of Branches Marks Spot Where Officers Have Been Laid to Rest, Ey WILLIAM MAXWELI. (Bppclal Cablft tr Arrangement with London Dany Telegraph and International News Service.) BEHIND THE ALLIES' LINES rN FRANCE, Sept., 20. To the ghastly fields about Pulsieux I came through haunting haunt-ing horrors. Men in gray and blue lay on the roadside, road-side, some as though they had laid down to rest and would spring to their feet at the trumpet's sharp .summons, others as though a savage beast had sprung upon them unawares and mauled them to death, others as though lightning had struck them and left only the charred remains. , One man was kneeling with his Tlfle on the shattered stump of a telegraph pole. He might have just sighted the enemy, but the finger on the trigger was stiff and cold and through the brow of tho soldier there was a, tiny- hole. Mute Signs of Agony. A hundred paces to, the rear of the earthern parapets lies a torn and overturned over-turned tent, a red' blanket, some crimson crim-son strips of linen and pieces of cotton cot-ton and wool that tell a tale of wounds and agony. Nearby ls a mound with a cross of branches, the grave of a gallant gal-lant officer, beloved by his men. The air is charged with the subtle and sickening odor of death. Here on the sloping plain they fought the batteries. You can trace the path of the men who fed the batteries. They blazed a trail with their blood. You can see where tho ammunition wagons waited in the rear and where the horses stamped with impatient hoof.. And the gunners the men who fought among flame and thunder In a hurricane of lead and steel you can see where they stood behind the earthen wall, where they mended the shattered parapet with spent cases and where they took cover in a little cave dug in the side of the emplacement when the answering guns got the range and poured upon them their deadly shower. Men and Guns Gone. Men and guns have gone, the broad fields aro silent ayid deserted, and all the emplacements are empty, except two. Outlined against the gray sky are the I skeletons of guns. There is always some strange attraction about a gun that has i been wounded in battle. It is like a human being. It was the same witli these German guns. I felt as if I stood before nipn who had fought like heroes and who hail been sorely wounded and left on the battlefield. How well they must have fought, those two comrades, who stood proudly side by side among the wreckage! What thunderbolts they must have placed ! Many are the wounds of these guns. They have been struck in a score of places, yet they held fast to the death, hurling back holt for bolt and showering death and destruction until the huirlcane overwhelmed over-whelmed them and the fires of hell leaped upon them, burning the very earth around them and leaving only, the charred heaps on which the guns lie still pointing point-ing to the enemy defiant oven in the hour of death. Died at His Post. The men who fought Uumi must have been worthy of the guns. I wonder if ' their commander lies under the little cross to the rear. This honor, I feel sure, was his alone, for I know that lie died bravely at his post. Among the charred rubbish lay a silver whistle attached at-tached to a silken cord, which was bloodstained blood-stained and the whlstlo was crushed and bloody. Across the plain where lie many of the slain French and Germans who fell in the charge against tbn trenches, another battery fought and was wounded. Close by lie the horses and caissons in one hideous heap and beyond is a wood of dense growth. The wood is in a perpetual per-petual shadow and it is well that the darkness should hide the horrors I saw among the trees. |