A MODERN BATTLEFIELD

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2302, 9 November 1914, Page 7

A MODERN BATTLEFIELD

GERMAN PRIEST'S DESCRIPTION The following account of a modern French battlefield is from the pen of a German priest from Saarbmcken. (Rhino Provinces, Prussia), who went at the ond of August to Luneville to look for the body.of a German officer known to have fallen on the-field. It was just after the terrible battta fought from the 19th to the 23rd of August. The priest says: Wo left Luneville at daybreak, and arrived almost at once on the immense battlefield over which we had driven tho evening before, after dark. How shall I describe so terrible a kingdom of Death? In the ditches by the roadside, on every mound, in tho fields and meadows, mixed up with tho dead bodies of horses, lay the mangled corpses of the enemy. Some had their arms bent as. if in a last movement to defend themselves; the clenched fingers of others bore witness to the hoiror of their last moments, and blood and dust still further disfigured features already distorted by rage and terror. Ammunition wagons, upset and with broken wheels, scraps of uniforms, and arms of every kind" wore heaped as far as tho eye could see.. No German dead were to be seen. Great mounds of recently dug earth, all in line, carefully raked ovor, and marked with wooden orosses, show the places where tho fallen heroes' comrades piously did their last duty by them. After every battle our soldiers' first thought is for those who aro no more.

Our way took us to Einville, where is the Seventh.Military "Hospital. Great God, what'a spectacle I For two ovon'ings I have had it continually before my eyes, and I shall never be able to forget the horror of it. In the coun-, try house of a French notary were lying side by side tho most seriously wounded and tho dying, perhaps already dead. They were Tying thus 'side by side out of doors, oven on the lawiv in. front of the house. For days and nights they had been waiting for someone to attend to them, for most. of them had not even had their wounds dressed... And yet the doctor's were doing_ their work with unparalleled de-. votion, but there were not 'enough of them to overtake it. 'Li the dusk wo had .to walk carefully for. fear . of knocking ; against tho wounded ,or treading on the dying. After stepping over the last line of them, we stood still a few minutes to look, around the dark field in which they, were lying, so', close together as to touch one another.. The silence was. death-like, though from time to time it was broken by some feeble groan, after which absolute calm prevailed once more.. We wondered whether the poor' sufferers still lived or whether they were at the end of their sufferings. All. my life long I shall remember this sight.i at Einville, on the canal from the Marne to the Rhine, that hospital open to the sky, with the wounded' unattended to day and night. At length v/e found the dead man for whom wo wero looking, and'whom we had promised to bring back to his own people that they might bury him in- his native earth. He was a young, officer,, whose marriage I had solemnised a few days before mobilisation. And now wo were confronted with his corpse. Some Eiuyillo people, poor day labourers, helped me to discover the body, and took infinite pains over doing so, nor would'they :accept anything' for ■ their' trouble. ' "Wo won't- take anything," they said; "we are* Christians." Indeed, their whole thought, was for the tragic fato of the officor and', of his young .wife..."Poor,-.brave.fellow 1 Pcor woman." said they. I sshook, hands with them and went away, deeply touched. ■' .'■ ~,.:,; In the village street we m'et'a. more' than usually mournful funeral proces-, sion, headed by the cure, a venerable, white-haired priest, with the vicaire beside him, and behind them v six largo wagons, draWn by horses'and led by some peasants;. The wagons were, transporting heaps of corpses to their common grave, dug alongside the cemetery wall. ': ~.-''■

With tlio body of my young officer, I overtook ail ambulance, in which a colonel had died of his wounds, that very morning. He had been laid on the ground, with his long cloak ove'r him; and his military cap and .word on, his breast. His orderly had piously scattered flowers about his improvised deathbed. Despite his serious wounds, tho officer looked as if ho had fallen peacefully asleep. A coffin having been improvised, I took his dead body also home to his country on tho motor-van put at my-disppsal.'