WHY SOLDIERS GO MAD

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2654, 28 December 1915, Page 9

WHY SOLDIERS GO MAD

THE SHOOK OF ARTILLERY FIRE. A British officer at the front gives tho following description of bombardment fly German artillery and its effects "Sooii the- trench was wrapped in an eddying fog of dust, 'oartli, and smoke. YOll did fiot merely hear the noise with your ears; you became physically stunned by it. Howitzers are generally dotted about singly in concealed positions, but 011 this occasion the Germans had them in batteries of four, placed together like field guns. You could hear the four muffled thuds in quick succession as tho batteries fired. A moment's pause, and then the shells came hurrying into hearing, starting as a murmur and rising to a shriek as they rushed at you. Would this lot get you? Yes —no —yes —no —they would burst all together with a splitting crash that bounced you up . and down as if the trench was a tramcar in liiotion. '-I think it is this lying listening to tho shells that drives people insane during big bombardments. The ground heaves up and down when they burst, but when they strike ajid fail to burst you oscilla-to from side to side if you aro close enough. I don't know why tliore should bo this difference. "No placo is safer than another in the trench, as these great shells dig out the entire section of trench they hit, and bury overything and everyone under tons of earth. At the end' of the day there wero hundreds of yards of trench that were only traced in tho ground. Quite early in the day my pack antl equipment were blown to nothingness, where they lay on tho back parapet. Thero is absolutely-nothing to do but lie and wait, feeling liko a moth pinned on a cork. "So tlie endless day wore on. Survivors wore rushing to tho places where tho last salvos had burst-, where the half-buried and crushed were shrieking hoarsely for help, digging frenziedly with tools and hands, with blooding nails, like dogs in their efforts to get them out before they wero suffocated. If you found legs sticking out from tho earth you pulled at them! and if there was any response you tried to dig them out, but if they made 110 responso you concluded they were dead, and dug where you would be of more use. "All oldish, grey-looking man near me, who had been quietly chuckling to himself and drawing figures in the mud with his finger, suddenly gave yells of laughter and sprang out of the* trench before anyone could have him. Ho ran about jnmping and shouting until 110 foil riddled by the machine guns that had been sweeping up and down the top of our parapets all the time, in the hope of catching unwary heads. Just before that I had to tell off an orderly to look after a man whose hand had been shot off, who was trying to do just the same thing. "It is an extraordinary sensation to feel your reason tottering and your selfcontrol slipping. It is a- real, almost physical, sensation. You.feel it slipping as plainly as tho first quickening glide on a switchback at Earl's Court, and the effort to hold 011 is as real as gripping the sides as, tho car plunges downwards. "I think everyone has had to bui'd up a dual personality. For instance, take the universal phenomenon out here of_ • tho man who at homo would certainly not have made a hearty meal if it had been served to him in a --.veilstocked mortuary, but because you see him now eating jam and biscuit ",mid appalling human wreckage, it does not mean that 110 has been brutalised. On the contrary, he is now, and for always, a far sadder man with a vast capacity for human pity that lie never knew before."