ENGINE SAVED FROM HUNS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2799, 17 June 1916, Page 10

ENGINE SAVED FROM HUNS

.liHEEZY NIGHT EXPLOIT BT •FKENCH PAKTY.

[■From U. Warner Allen, British Press representative with the French Army.] There was once a threshing oiigine just behind the first line of trenches which attracted the covetous eye of a certain French engineer officer. It was stanling in some farm buildings, most of which had been knocked to pieces by the enemy, but the wall of the shed that hid ittvaa still untouched and the engine "intact. It was only a few yards from. the shed door to the high road and the officer vowed to carry off tho engine out of the German range. " ' The first , thing was ;to • borrow a gun team, the second to find a few reckless spirits like himself; When night fell they carefully prepared a path troin the shed to tho road. Then tliey brought their horses, with feet muffled in .sacks, from the rear and harnessed them to a long rope,'of which the further end was. firmly fixed to the engine. The horses' feet-were then unmuffled. A , few cautious tugs brought the engine out of the shed down a little incline into tho road. The commotion' roused the Bocho sentries, and a star shell soon threw a far • too vivid. light on the proceedings.. There was no further need for concealment and the artillery horses, urged to their utmost with whip and spur, dashed off at a wild gailop along the road, while, creaking, groaning, and swaying, there followed behind them the threshing engine. What impression the noise of the horses' hoofs made 011 the Germans it ; s impossible to say. They probably thought it was a cavalry charge. At any rate, they passed a wakeful night, breaking continually into intermittent bursts of firing, while the engine, unscathed, was carried into a place of safety, where today it drives a dynamo.