Show FACE DEATH TO KEEP TELEPHONE limski LINES WORKING the job of the soldier lineman Is most hazardous in battle battie line DEATH CONSTANT COMPANION letter describing operations of armies somewhere Sone Sorie where in france tells of daring work of men who keep telephone lines open new york the following letter from a soldier in the british army somewhere in france has been received in this city by the father of the writer 1 I expect you are wondering what we are doing up here for or the past week or so go As operations are concluded now or anyway those in chica our divis division laa has been concerned I 1 think im at liberty to give you some idea of been done without fear ear of falling foul of the censor recollect all the trouble a short while back about a chateau it its tables stables and a crater which we have co continually n been disputing over with the doches boches which they finally kicked us out of with liquid fire and sundry other horrors well the divi slon sion on that section got pretty badly mauled hauled and the position became most uncomfortable so about ten days ago our division was told off to prepare an attack and to restore the situation it if possible we were well away to the left 0 of this zone and as they did net n propose to move us until the last we were busily employed in constant journeys over there to reconnoiter recon and prepare the ground I 1 was given the job ob of doing this tor for our battery and the brigade I 1 also had to range the eight inch and 92 inch howitzers howit I 1 really had a very heavy weeks work firstly this now zone was about a tour four mile walk and under fire all the way no horses homes could be used and a bicycle was harder work than walking owing to the mud all the time the weather has been vile tons of rain and very hot and muggy I 1 had to get off each day about six a m and di get back till eight p Ps m or so always getting cut we had to run miles of telephone w wire ire and as this was always getting cut by shell fire you can guess that thai I 1 and my had some pretty hot times keeping our communications going all observation had to be done from our fortified trenches these werf were simply hopeless battered to wele mere huud heaps and perpetually bom barded baided by the enemy and the antan try holding them had a frightful time lime of it IL these particular trenches tren chea run along a crest of a slope and have beer been alternately held by us and the Deutsc hers several times during the last few weeks its almost impossible to describe the confusion and beastliness of them the soil Is very loose indeed and the rain and the th belling elling have turned them into a gi 91 gantic sart of hog wallow like you have in the abe center of a farm the smell Is horrible and all over oven the place are dead bodies scattered equipment refuse refuge etc one feels it its s perfectly idiotic to fight over the tenure of such a tile bole every tree la is wrecked and blackened and there a vestige of 0 greenery left bar the beastly green fungus like patches where the H E shells have burst burgt even the rain water and mud goes bright green from this cause talk about the blasted heath of macbeth it in it with the ruin and desolation of this part of the world 1 I don t know it ive managed to convey to you any idea ot of the part ive been existing in lately but its been like a horrible nightmare to me and ive seen been a few horrors this last year shelled all day long all day long we have been shelled up there and also had bad several trench mortars at work throwing 90 pound bombs by compressed air this particular brute Is called a er and you can see the bomb coming it goes up miles in the air turns a somersault and then begins to drop one gets an idea after pl a time as to where it will tall fall and then theres a rush for or cover the beastly thing lies on the ground for about two seconds before bursting and altogether its a thoroughly nerve racking brute the infantry loathe them and keep a perpetual lookout tor for the sols sidge as they call it its also called the aerial torpedo the effect Is terrific and I 1 believe it does more harm than most shells glad to say we have got onto several of these things recently every hour or so all the german guns would open a prearranged bombardment bar dment of this position and then we get it with a vengeance you cant imagine how rotten it Is you crouch down in the very bottom of the trench and it seems as it if its impossible to come it alive the air Is full of 0 a colossi colos istl and deafening rushing sound the whole earth trembles para pets and sandbags sandbars sand bags tall fall in and showers and smashed up things fly shrieking all over the shop evfim in stant slant the explosions seem to come nearer to you and finally when you have made up your mind that tha t its it 6 all up with you the row dies away and you go back to the ordinary intermittent shelling and bom bombarding bardin g which then seems almost peaceful dead are everywhere of 0 course we had bad plenty of 0 casual ties and the gunners dit escape the last day I 1 was up there tb ere our wire got blown to bits somewhere out in the open behind the trenches for about the hundredth time so I 1 went out with one of 0 my to try to repair it we were in the midst of registering our targets for the at tack and we had to go over some aw tul ful places dead Deutsc bers hers everywhere suddenly as we crept along a hedge there was a terrific bang a cloud ot of smoke and my man about fifty yards yarda ahead of me disappeared entirely of course I 1 flattened flatten pd out at once I 1 thought the poor chap had bad been completely bown blown to bits as the shell had burst right at his feet how ever I 1 heard a yet yell after a few seconds and made a arsh for ohp balint taking what cover I 1 could be because it 11 callif looked as it if wed been seen an anil the Deutsc hers had fired one of their forward guns at us I 1 found the poor beggar still alive and conscious but horribly cut I 1 made him as table as I 1 could told him film to lie still because he could be seen and would very likely bo be stint shot at again and thell him bunked off to try to find a stretcher party we were home way from our trenches and in a part strictly avoided on account of the attention paid to it by the Deutsc hers I 1 suppose because there are some of their old trenches there that we took witti the bayonet luckily I 1 gone far before I 1 met a sergeant and two in men 11 so I 1 collared him and sending 0 off affo one ne man tor for the stretcher bearers the rest of us went back and got gol my chap out of it we tied mm him up as best we c could uld and then had to carry him pig a back to the fire trenches where the stretcher bearers dressed his big wounds and set bet about getting him off to thit tn casualty clearing station I 1 think hell recover all right but he had a rotten time ot of it came the day there have been a good many wounded in the battery recently but none killed we have had two guns hit and knocked out as well but I 1 feel eel sure the enemy really located us because never been able to stop us firing and only put over halt half a dozen rounds during the big show yesterday the other battery in our brigade has not been so lucky bad two officers wounded and quite a number of men killed well to resume I 1 eventually got all our reconnoiter reconnoitering ing and registration done but not until id spent several days in this horrible zone and was wa almost worn out then yesterday morning at a quarter of three a m came the day it started with halt half an hours bombardment of the deutsch ers trenches by all our guns and dur ing this time our infantry crept up under cover 0 of darkness next at an arranged moment all guns were turned to the left and onto other prearranged points so as to form a flank ing wall of fire while the infantry got in finally we all switched on to our final points and kept up several hours houra bombarding of the commini cation callon and reserve trenches while our infantry consolidated the positions gained it was all perfectly success tul ful and we accomplished everything we were ordered to do thanked for their work all through the day the Deutsc hers tried to counterattack counter attack but we easily beat them off each time last night was absolutely quiet and we all got a good nights sleep we have received telegrams from the commander of the second army and also from the commander in chief thanking us tor for doing the jobino well and generally buttering us up our corps command er has also wired to us of the artillery artiller Y thanking us for the perfect co cooper oper opera a tion afforded by the gunners so were all pleased and the sixth slon Is very bucked at having brought off the job 0 K furthermore they say that he nt have continued to hold ypres cypres without taking the pos eions weve got and better still the they say that the division Is now coming out tor for a rest 1 I suppose this has only been a minor show but there were a good many thousand men engaged and we really had a battle with the boches and whacked them 1 I 1 do wish the end would come in sight for or im absolutely tired of the whole thing and want to get home it rather looks as if were in for another winter out here we had bad unlimited for this little show so perhaps things are bucking up in that direction all the same we fire nearly as much a we could have done but specialized in accuracy they say that they found all our registered points eints tull full of dead boches and smashed up machine guns |