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Show FIGHTER LIVES 35 DAYS IN HOLE British Private's Experience Considered Con-sidered Most Remarkable Remark-able of War. AIDS HIS HELPLESS COMRADE Lives on Food Taken From Dead Bodies Wanders Too Far Afield and Is Taken Prisoner by Germans. London. Private Peters of the British army lived five weeks with a helpless comrade in a hole within :tliirty yards of the German trenches. Their experience is considered the most remarkable of the war. It was in UltUT, at Crolselles that the fifty men then remaining of Private Peters' company were ordered to dig in. The spot was. a sunken road. The men iiad passed their objective and run into t.lieir own barrage fire. They fell like iiiinepiii.s. When Private Peters looked up from his digging only his captain, himself and a comrade named McGuiness remained. re-mained. Then the captain was shot dead and t he comrade fitfully wounded. Private Peters went out for a look around :and found a stretcher bearer wil'h a shattered thigh. He hauled liiiu into the dugout. The stretcher bearer had iodine and his wound was kpt free -o,f infection. "That night two -German oflirers came -along, but we shammed tlead f and they passed on briskly, for the Britisii stuff was coming over," snys Peters, telling his story. "Shrapnel lodged on top of our dugout dug-out ; bits found their way inside. The German officers stood over us the next night. But they never searched our hiding place. "There were sixty dead men lying about outside. Each night I went out and took away their iron rations and biscuits. The first few days we were short of water; (hen It ratned every day for a while and I citnght wnter In mackintosh sheets. "I made a siove of a bu'ly-beef tin, broken candles and a flannel rng, caught the rays of the sins with a periscope per-iscope glass when It shone, and so lighted our stove. "We had hot coffee, coc in and beef cubes this way. But we wkm were reduced re-duced to rifle oil and wood for fuel. Food of Dead Gives Out. "The night came when the food of the dead soldiers outside hud all been liiken, and I went further afield, with a compass. I got lost and fell over a German telephone wire. I was captured cap-tured and sent to Genua ly. where 1 was heh until armistice d:iy." Taylor, after Peters' enplure. was examined by Ihe Germans, who lifted ills sound leg, but be sha.limed dead and they passed on. Then he crawled through the German trenches, which were by that time thinly held, over I lie bathed wire, across No Man's Lund and to the British lines. But bis leg was so iong unset that lie will never walk right again. |
