Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-11-21 | Page 2 | Americans at Battle Front Showing Form

IEIIS IT BATTLE FflOfjT SIIOK FORM Cool and Methodical, They Man the Guns as Though Warfare Was Life's Business. SOLDIERS IN FINE PHYSICAL SHAPE Tour by Correspondents Reveals Re-veals Excellent Condition of Fighting1 Contingent in Zone of Battle. WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY IN FRANCE, Nov. 0 (By the Associated Press i. The American artillery and infantry in-fantry at the front are. dry once more, the rain having ceased for several days. The correspondents visiting the immediate imme-diate front throflgli the courtesy of the French staff found that the Americans had taken advantage of the rainless weather and were devoting all their energies to changing, as they put it, "Germans Into casualties." They are on their toes every minute and are not letting let-ting a single opportunity slip to drop a shell or send machine gun and rifle bullets bul-lets where the enemy Is seen, or where he even is suspected of being. There is no doubt that the men like the life they are living. They are as cool and methodical as if they had been doing nothing else than fighting throughout their lives. The fine group in the first line trenches had just sat down to their salmon sandwiches sand-wiches and coffee when they jumped up and cut loose with their automatic rifles ri-fles at Germans who were discovered hanging out clothes on a wire in a battered bat-tered village. They saw the enemy dive for cover like rabbits, and then they went on with their meal as if nothing had happened. Uniforms Are Muddy. This particular section of France's long battle front in the earth does not absorb ab-sorb water like a sponge, as in some other localities. There has been no rain for three days, so the ground is fairly dry. The uniforms of the men show evidences evi-dences of where mud once had been, but that is all. From the first-line trenches, which are on a hill, the German first line can he seen clenrly, between 500 and 1000 yards awav. There was something in the German Ger-man first line once which will never go back to Germany. It is a woolly dog which deserted the enemy, crossed No Man's Land and bounded into an American Ameri-can trench one dark night recently. U licked the hand of an American "dough-bov," "dough-bov," and was promptly fed with a piece of "white bread and a handful of Columbia Colum-bia river 'salmon. He was thereupon adopted and now roams all around the trenches and even walks upon the parapet para-pet and through the barbed wire entanglements entan-glements as if there were no war. Pup Is Adopted. "This pup." said one of the soldiers, "Is a naturalized American, and there is no hvphen about him. He has entirely forgotten all his Boehe connections. I hope he gets a chance to bite the kaiser." As the correspondents approached the trench lines over the shell-pitted ground the enemv started breaking shrapnel over the first line. This firing lasted but a brief time, stopping as suddenly as it began. Immediately afterward came detonations de-tonations from the rear and the whiz cf shells overhead as the American batteries bat-teries got into action. Then smoke puffs suddenly began appearing over the. German Ger-man trenches. The infantrymen looked cautiously over No Man's LaWl while the firing was going on, but as soon as it was over they appeared to forget all about it. In a near-by dugout the men off duty had not even heard the racket. Their principal worry seemed to be rats. One occupant of the dugout explained that there was sleeping room In It for thirty-eight men and that twelve cats were kept in It. Cats were everywhere, some sleeping on folded blankets and some prowling in dark corners or stalking stalk-ing their prey. In Good Health. The men all appeared to be in the best of health, although during the wet and cold weather of previous days several men in this unit had contracted "trench feet" and cold. While the sun was going down behind be-hind the hills and the darkness was coming com-ing on swiftly scarcely a shot was fired. Just as the sun passed below the horizon, hori-zon, however, the German batteries opened upon one of the American battery bat-tery positions with a hot fire, the high explosives bursting with the regularity of the clock tick about one every second. sec-ond. The bombardment lasted a couple of minutes and then ended abruptly. Immediately Im-mediately the American batteries retaliated, re-taliated, flashes of orange -colored flame stabbing the night. The detonations some heavy and some light continued for some time with as much speed as the Germans had shown. Then, the "strar-ing" "strar-ing" and the answer being over, the artillery ar-tillery settled down for the night of usual quiet.