"EFFICACY FIRE"

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3029, 16 March 1917, Page 5

"EFFICACY FIRE"

The Press Association's correspondent with tho French armies, thus describes efficacy fire, the most terrifying incident of tho modern battlefield:—

Ono' of tho German aeroplano soouta wheeling over the French lines must have seen, or thought ho saw, movement. "Whatever •Che reason, tho Germans made tip their minds that the French wero browing something, and deoided to put it to the ordeal known to French- gunners as efficacy fire. Gormaoa guns I had been firing heavily all day but at l targets far behind the French front Suddenly, as simultaneously as if a single hand was firing all their guns with single motion, a dozen batteries opened iipo.n us. The roar of the first ealvo 1 was tho only warning. That roar did not die away. It was caught up and magnified a hundredfold as more and more German guns gc-t to work, each firing as hard as sweating artillorymen could drive them. T'co shell bursts melted into a great sea of 6iuoko and flying earth. Every yard of ground was topped with its own billow of yellowy whito smoke. Tho shells, ono judged, were mostly of intermediate calibres, from tho swift, highly unpleasant 130 millimetre gun to the Sin. howitzer. For five minutes tho rafalo lasted, seeming to grow constantly in intensity until, as suddenly as it began, it ceased. During those minutes thousands of projectiles must have burst.

! The meaning of efficacy fire •is that i e.'ory available gun—sometimes hundreds i of picces swell the chorus of destrnof L : on—is turned simultaneously on to a. ■ particular spot with tho objeSt of uttcr- ; Iy smashing and smothering somo movement or work that is in progress thero Speed and suddenness and paraIvsiag violence of the firo are essentials of the thing. It is perhaps tho i.-.osi Iwritio incident of the modern battlefield. Thero can bo heavily any exporieneo of war more leiTii>l»" than to bo caught without a moment's warning under such an avalanche of destruction.' It was a consolation to us. who wafchod from a place of safety,- to re- • member that the Germans themselves had provided our Poihis plenty of doop shelters in prevision of just such tempests of artillery fire as the ona I havo ■described, J