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Show SOLDIERS IN HOT PURSUIT. BUSSIANS AND JAPS LONGED FOR FRESH MEAT. (Correspondence of the Associated Press.) OX the Front Line of Russian Defense. De-fense. Below Mukden, Nov. 20. The thermometer is 5 below zero. There has not been much snow yet, but it is perishing, cold, and fuel is almost at prohibitive prices. We have just come in from a ride around the front. It was nearly a mile to the extreme front through fields of cut kaolin, the giant millet of Man-j Man-j churia, which is being rapidly burned i for fuel. Whole villages of Chinese huts have been gutted of every particle of woodwork for the same purpose. Nearly the whole of the army is living underground, where body heat has to serve instead of fires. Visit to the Trenches. It was a desolate ride to the trenches. We caught up with the officer of the day visiting his outposts and accompanied accom-panied him along miles of trenches where the ground is already frozen a foot deep and the thousands of soldiers are working rapidly extending the lines of defense and burrowing into the ground for bomb-proofs and dugouts before the frost gets a real grip on things and the ground freezes like granite, seven feet down. Toward noon we cam; to an extensive entrenchment and encampment, where numerous little fires were burning and big kettles swung" from cross-sticks showed that the soldiers "were preparing prepar-ing tea. Here the general commanding and a group f staff officers welcomed us. and in addition .to the tea one of them actually produced a lemon to go with it. How a lemon ever got into that part of Manchuria was a mystery that the lieutenant refused to solve. Nests in the Cliff. Ahead of us on the reverse face of the cliff were scor?s of what looked like gigantic swallows' nests. They - ware . . f I simply holes in the cliff, each hole thatched round with a woven tunnel of ' kaolin stalks. Here the men live a dozen to the dugout, packed like sar-! sar-! dines at night for warmth, but 00m-I 00m-I fortable. Some of the officers' dugouts ' are fairly luxurious. ... The men, have plenty of tea and are fairly fed. but fresh meat is a luxury that is not to be neglected at any juncture, junc-ture, and suddenly, while we were talking talk-ing by the fire, some fresh meat made its appearance. There was a row toward the forward lines of trenches that might have presaged pre-saged a Japanese attack, and wo rushed to a knoll that commanded a view. There, from a seemingly deserted desert-ed Chinese hut rushed a half-grown pig, a shoat of the Manchurian razor-back razor-back variety. After it went a Cossack in hot pursuit. Other Cossacks joined the chase, but the pig. threading the trenches, gained the open ground and headed for the Japanese lines, less than 400 yards away. Reckless of death or anything else, six Cossacks dashed in pursuit, with their long brown coata tucked around their waists. But the pig headed cross the imaginary dividing line. and charged the Japanese position. The opposite hill slope, to all appearances, had been vacant and silent as the grave, but a hidden trench suddenly gave up a party of Japanese, and away they went after the pig. Pig Got Away. The Cossacks stopped and the Japanese Japan-ese headed the pig diagonally back toward to-ward the Russian lines. They did not catch it, but a fresh relay of Russians took up the chase, and the pig veered over again to the Japanese. Not a shot was fired all this time, and the Japanese Japan-ese and Cossacks stood within 100 paces of each other in the open, laughing at each - other's non-success and hurling mutual maledictions after the pig. The last we saw of it, the pig was keeping strictly to the neutral strip between the forces, and holding westward in the direction of Liao river. The general laughed, , though he also jsighed at'; the ; t hough t of vanished pig, and invited Mis over" to' have more tea at his "palace." "I do not patronize anything but pal- 1 aces." he. explained, as we. mounted to follow him, "and, : there being none hereabouts' I had one built." It was down a steep trail, where' the horses fairly sat down and slid on the frozen' ground. Overhanging the edge of a narrow valley was the palace, a. more than unusually commodious dugout, and inside a stove was cunningly built into the wall with home-made bricks. It had had a fire in it the day before, and was shut up tight and still warm. Before it on the. ground sat Prince Radzivil. just come in from a scout,'' and warming his red hands against the bricks. There was a table and a tiny window letting ina little light from a tunnel on one side. And hot tea, without lemon, this time, added to, the joys. of living. Shell Came Whizzing. We turned back later along the route we had come. The opposite hillside was vacant and silent as usual. But from a far-distant crest came a wink of light almost like-a heliograph, and a ew seconds later a big - byzantine shell burst with a thunderous noise and a cloud of smoke and dirt close to the trench where we had seen the pig race in the morning. We climbed to a heliograph helio-graph station on the cliff above and found the officer in charge flashing a message to Poutiliff hill. Through the binoculars we could see Poutiloff's tiny mirror winking in reply. "New bat- , tery." said the officer, jerking his head toward where the shot came from,' while a signal sergeant, through a transit, was scanning the hill crest. Had the Location. "Peutiloff and I both have got his angle approximately." he explained, "and we know the base line from here to Poutiloff hill, so the next time he shoots we can triangulate; on him anJ get the exact range. We will make things interesting for nim .a little later," he added significantly. So we.rode slowly back to our dugout, dug-out, leaving.-the signal officer trying to beat some circulation into his mittened hands. There may be a fight tonight or there 'may not. but that is all there is to tell just now cf a day along the front. - , |
