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Show IN BATTLE ONE ! GETS TO IMAGINE HE IS IMMUNE Cannot Seem to Realize That If You Are Killed You Are Dead. REVENGE IS RULING PASSION Cupt. Morton Webber, Twice Wounded In Three Campaigns With Allies, Discusses Psychology of Battle Bat-tle Tells How He Outwitted Outwit-ted Clever Woman Spy. New York. A man dressed in well-cut well-cut clothes limped into the Rocky Mountain club. He was Capt. Morton Webber of the Royal field artillery, vho 18 months ago bade good-by to his club friends when he went off to fight for the British empire. Yesterday Yester-day he was glad to be in n city of peace, but at the same time there seemed to be a trace of sorrow now and again in his demeanor, caused perhaps per-haps through his being physically incapacitated in-capacitated and therefore for the time being unable to rejoin his regiment. Captain Webber is the type of soldier sol-dier who dislikes to talk about what be has seen. It was difficult to draw from him details of his experiences at the front. In fact, it was only through a good friend of the British officer that In his enthusiasm for Great Britain he said something about the three campaigns in which he had fought If Captain Webber had had his own way tjils story would have read : "First I got a commission. Then I went to France and afterward to Alexandria, Alex-andria, Galllpoll and the Balkans. Now I'm here." Captain Webber is a consulting engineer, engi-neer, an expert on mine valuation. He gave up a comfortable Income without with-out an iota of regret to go to England. That Ypres Salient "Ten days after 1 landed in England," Eng-land," suid Captain Webber, "I received re-ceived n commission In the Royal field artillery. Previous to that I had told them that I was accustomed to handling han-dling men, as I had been doing so for about twelve years. I said that I was giving up a good living and that if they did not want me I would stay for two weeks in Devonshire and then return to the United States. "Then I went to Frn.ice," he continued. con-tinued. "1 was laid out there at Hill No. 60 on the Ypras salient." Apparently this was final with Captain Cap-tain Webber and I then said : "Tell me what happened." "Oh, we practically got wiped out. It was a bloody fight. One of the noticeable no-ticeable things about the fighting (and there's no secret in telling this, because be-cause 1 would not discuss anything of military value) was how much the operations op-erations were dependent on artillery control. An attack cannot be followed up without the guns. Artillery domination, do-mination, has, of course, long since been appreciated by both sides. Psychology of Battle. "You see so much on the battlefield that you are absolutely detached from yourself, especially after you have lost half your neti. You can't realize that If you ar l-.iJ.lpd you are dead. Somehow Some-how or other you get to imagine you are Immune, but you always have the feeling, after you see one man and ihen another drop, that you want to lake It out on the enemy. I was scup-Jiered scup-Jiered laid out and was taken off the battlefield. With able medical attendance attend-ance It was not long before I recovered, recov-ered, and then I was sent to Alexandria Alexan-dria and from there to Galllpoll. I was at Gallipoli from June to September, when our brigade was Ieut to a French general and we were sent on the original origi-nal Balkan expedition. We drove the tiulgnrs across the Yardar to their ow n country, but owing to the collapse of the Serbian army, which exposed our flank, we were forceu to fall back on Suloniki, and in the rear guard actions our buttery and another were sacri-j sacri-j flced in order to get the infantry out of the lasses. Then 1 was taken to the hospital and here I am." Again there was a finality to his tone. "Tell us some more detail," said his listeners. There was a Civil war veteran, vet-eran, a young college graduate and a Canadian financier in the room. All wanted something more out of Captain Cap-tain Webber. Outwitting a Woman. "You are very exacting," he said. "But I do remember something about a German spy. The spy was a woman. She was a wonder ns to looks and attire, at-tire, nnd I was Introduced to her one (lay in Alexnn&.-ia. She fc'ns full of thought for the British army. She asked me to accept a lift In her automobile. auto-mobile. I did. At that time I had our guns close to the yacht club to train on the breakwater. The yacht races were still going on every day near the club and fushiopably dressed women with escorts frequented the place. This woman often asked me to take a ride in her automobile. She could drive well and fast. Then one day she surprised me. " 'Where's your observation station?' she asked. "It was a question which would have been unusual from a man who was not in the army and abo&i the last thiDg for a woman to ask. As a matter of fact the observation station was in a lighthouse, but as I looked at her pretty pret-ty eyes I lied and told her that It was in the steeple of the English church. After that I found that she did not come aroi nd to the club and I had no more automobile rides. I was always waiting for a four-inch submarine gun to biff that church. "We were going to be Interned, so the Greeks told us, if we retired within their gates. Perhaps we might have been, except ior the presence suddenly sudden-ly of ten British warships. They cleared for f.ctlon and after that there was no more talk about interning us. An Ignorant "Doctor." "It was in Salonlki that I came across another German spy. I was accosted ac-costed in a store by a man who wore a uniform of the Royal Army Medical corps. He asked me where I had been wounded and I gave him the medical name for the thigh bone. I soon saw that he did not know whether I had been hit in the head or the foot He came from Yorkshire, he said. But he lacked the accent I went to a cafe with him and sent an urgent request for the provost marshal and soon the man was escorted away. "On another occasion a spy In Sa-loniki Sa-loniki got within our lines and lighted a bonfire. This was against orders and at dawn we realized from the dropping of shells that the spy had given the enemy our position. The enemy en-emy guns were behind a ridge. We waited for them and worked out their position carefully, but could not exactly ex-actly determine their distunce until an unexploded shell arrived. It was set for 4,1)00 meters and marked by the Krupp firm. That night we waited until un-til they were firing again and then suddenly, sud-denly, knowing all their men were at the guns, we let them have three battery bat-tery salvos of high explosive shells. We heard their ammunition boxes blow up, and afterward we heard nothing noth-ing from that direction. "You talk about fights and battles nnd ask what I remember. I'll tell you what impressed Itself on my mind more than anything ele. It was a giant kiltie. He must have been champing at the bit before they let him out of the trenches by the way he went for the Germans. He was so strong that he drove part of the barrel of his gun, with the bayonet, Into one of the enemy. He could not extricate his gun. I then saw this Scot reach down nnd pick up the German's weapon weap-on and with that he killed the man who was seeking to avenge the death of the first German. "That time, too, the bayonet went In too far. Nothing loath, this brawny kiltie grabbed a third man's gun. A Discord of Fighting. "We got a present of a piano for our mess in Gallipoli. We did not get much of a chance to try it out, because the first night it was tuned up for the evening a high explosive shell swung right into it and the next month we were continually picking up keys. 1 "It's hard to have any conception of the amount of lead, iron and copper that is being shot into the ground and which can't be recovered. An idea of this can be gathered when it is realized real-ized that solely through allied buyings, copper has risen from a normal 13 and 14 cents to 28 cents. And lead, which has a normal price of 3 to 4 cents, now is up to 8 cents. Remember that Germany requires just as much as tha allies, which she is unable to get because of the British fleet and it's only a question of time before she begins be-gins to feel the pinch. "I should say that the greatest strategical stra-tegical masterpiece of the war was that the allies had not tried 'a Verdun.' Ver-dun.' There it is common knowledge that four Germans have been killed for every Frenchmun. The Germans are bound to do something for a moral effect. ef-fect. We don't require that It's merely mere-ly a question of time before the German's Ger-man's waste of human element is going go-ing to bent him. The kaiser is suffering suffer-ing enormous losses for purely spectacular spec-tacular reasons. Our public does not require to be buncoed. "People don't realize what Great Britain has had to do. First she sent over an expeditionary force of 160,000, and while fighting she has simultaneously simultane-ously Increased her army to 5,000,000 men to terminate the war. I have never nev-er yet met an officer of one of our allies al-lies who has not told me that Great Britain would be keeping up her end on the sea alone and that she really was not counted upon for land fighting. fight-ing. "As to the outcome of the conflict I have not the least doubt. My only fenr is that we'll settle too cheaply. We should remember to keep studiously studious-ly in mind the debt we owe to the fellows fel-lows lying under the sod." |