"BOOBY TRAPS".

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16423, 17 January 1919, Page 5

"BOOBY TRAPS".

LITTLE TRICKS OF THE HUNS,

] (By Willie Wombat in "Sydney Morning Herald.") FRANCE, September 17. "Booby trap" hunting, while possessed of a certain amount of sport, has . its element of risk. It requires a man with strong nerves, a clear .head, and a keen eye. Presence of mind, too, is a great essential. Ia all these the Australian miners excel. Hunting for traps and mines is no sinecure.. The Germans have organised the system to such an extent, especially when making an organised withdrawal from certain positions, that great care must be .exercised. The most • likely places for traps, and which are regarded with special suspicion by troops until expert parties of miners examine them, are elaborately furnished dugouts, dug. outs under roads, single houses left standing where others are destroyed, all new work or new trench or other equipment in. the midst of weatherworn ground, second-hand articles, recently disturbed soil, new metalling, new trench boards, souvenirs (such as helmets, shells, badges, and bayonets left in conspicuous positions), and articles sticking in the ground, such as stick grenades or shovels. The method of firing these traps and mines are many. Delay action fuses depend on the eating away of a wire by a corrosive solution. They are absolutely silent, and require no connexions outside the charge. The long delay action fuse is an imitation pattern of a Hun gun fuse, and is chicfly intended for blowing up guns and munitions. Clockwork devices are of complicated make, and their only chance of discovery is by the ticking being heard. There are also percussion methods, which may be set in action by treading or pressing on a board hidden under earth, or by pressing against a railing, when a safety pin will be withdrawn, or a striker may be driven into a detonator. Electrical systems depend on a pull on a wire or pressure on some article to complete a contact. Telephone wires found are cut at once. Care, however, has to be taken in the matter of taut wires, which may. be found mixed, with slack wires, as they may be simply supporting a weight which, if the wire is severed, will drop on a detonator: Dugout traps are many. A shovel stuck into the side of a dugout between the timbers when removed may pull a wire which explodes a mine. A trench stove may have a stove-pipe dismantled, and one wire attached to the leg of the stovo and the other to the stove-pipe. When the stove-pipo is picked up a mine is fired. A charge of 20001b of perdite may bo in the seemingly deadend, of the gallery of a dugout, and connected to ordinary telephone wires. A window weight may be suspended by a fine cord stretched across the entrance of a dugout, and on a man entering the cord would be broken and the weight fall into a box of detonators connected to- a charge of explosives. Cap. badges, artificial flowers, bits of evergreen, pieces of shell, and other articles likely to be picked up as souvenirs are left in dugouts, and attached to charges. Handrails on the steps of dugouts may be attached by wires to charges. Charges may be placed in a chimnoy, with a length of fuse attached, which would be ignited if a fire wore lighted. A book on a table may -have a wire down the leg of a table to a charge. A step in the stairway of a dugout-of thin planking walked on will make contact with a mine. Other dugout tricks consist in placing a branch of a tree over the entrance, as if to concoal it. On moving the branch the explosion takes place. A dozen stick grenades may be firod by means of a wire attached to a i sandbag, which has to be moved before the door of a dugout can be opened. A blown-in entrance to a dugout is not always a safety sign, as charges may be concealed in the undestroyed portions—they are generally crudely arranged contact charges. One of the timbers on the side of the staircase of a dugout was poticod to be projecting slightly inwards at the top, though it was in place at the bottom. It was found that a nail had been driven through the lower end, and the point was placed against the cap of a cartridge, which had a charge of explosive behind it. A slight push on the plank and the nail would nave struck the cap and exploded the charge. In the trenches the Hun traps are not so numerous, but there are four < kinds which are looked for. They are hand grenades, liable to explode when kicked or trodden on. Two days after j the beginning of the Australian advance a party of Tommies, a corporal! and five men, were coming along the : road between Villers Bretonneux and ; Warfusie, when one of the men in the ] lead carelessly kicked a grenade out of I his way. It exploded, and three men ' were killed and the rest of the party wounded, two seriously. New trench i boards on the fire step may detonate grenades when trodden on. Barri-! cades, interlaced with wires, may be attached to stick grenades. Hand grenades may be buried in a trench, at tached to a telephone wire, just show- ! ing above the earth. Mine traps on roads may be cavities hollowed out under the road, leaving only the crust, and 8-inch shells- are placed in the cavities, with contact | fuses arranged to fire at the slightest j

pressure. An automatic box Dlin ?' de signed apparently to explode under a weicht greater than that of a man has been found on a road, the box being a few inches below *ho surface of _ road. Some hundreds of this latter class have been discovered and destroyed by Australian miners and engineers during the past six wcek ®- , The setting of "booby traps by the Allied armies is unknown. . in °ur biggest retreat, from Cambrai, to befoFo Amiens, our engmeers could have laid thousands of these if they had so desired. The creation of craters on main highways and cross-roads and the demolition of bridges before an advancing army must not be confused with "ifooby traps." They are methods for covering a retreating army.