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Show SHELL STOPPED GAME German "Coal Box" Tears Up Base Line Right at Start. American Gives Interesting Account of Baseball Games Played Back of Trenches Shortstop Wore the Only Mask. The following is a story of a ball game behind the first line trenches at the Somme, as told by A. G. Empey of New York : "In the trenches we eagerly awaited the result of our appeal. A few weeks later Sunta Claus arrived in the shape of the 'trench postman,' who, in surly tone, stated : " 'Say, Yank, there's about a million parcels at the orderly room for you. All from America, too. You'd need a limber to deliver them, and I hain't no limber, so you'd better get a couple-o' couple-o' blokes to carry tbem in.' "Those Tommies were just like happy hap-py kids, helping me to unwrap the different dif-ferent parcels, eleven in all. There was enough equipment for two teams. "I immediately got busy and organized organ-ized a baseball squad and my troubles started. Talk about boneheads, those ! Tommies were awful. After a while I managed to turn out a pretty fair bunch and we had several games behind be-hind the lines. "One day we had a game scheduled with the Canadians, it was just below Wipers (Ypres). All that morning we had been busy getting the diamond into shape for the game, and when we had finished the result was 0. K. The bases were sand bags, and for home plate a sniping plate was used. The foul lines were of white tape, which is generally used as a guide back to your own trenches while on bombing and raiding parties in No Man's Land. "About ten minutes before the scheduled sched-uled start of the game a German 'five-nine' 'five-nine' shell, or 'coal box,' plunked itself it-self right on the base line between first and home and exploded. "Earlier in the morning our first baseman, a Welshman, found an old German hand grenade of the 'hairbrush' 'hair-brush' variety. Being an ardent souvenir hunter, he proceeded to get busy on that bomb with the point of his bayonet wanted to see how the detonator worked. The result of his investigation was right arm blown oft and no first baseman. We filled ia with a substitute. It was awful; he'd . chase a runner right into the outfield trying to touch him with the ball. We lost that game by an overwhelming score. "Our shortstop had a bad habit of trying to stop hot grass eaters: with his foot result, the ball would climb his leg and paint his eye blue, green and yellow. After losing two teeth and getting a beautiful lamp he made a 'holler' to wear our only mask. I had to give in to him (he was a sergeant)-. Just imagine a shortstop wearing a mask; wouldn't it make you sick? "Another great difficulty, just when you had a man broken in so that he could cover a bag or play tie outfield a 'working' or 'digging' party would come along and said man would stop a German bullet and go on the sick list, losing all Interest in baseball. Out of the 33 Tommies originally in the squad 11 have been killed and 14 wounded." |