MADDENED BY BRITISH SHELLFIRE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3185, 8 September 1917, Page 9

MADDENED BY BRITISH SHELLFIRE

A GERMAN'S LETTER. • A German- letter found on the Messines Eidge gives a Rood picture of what tho enemy is enduring. It is dated June G (the day before tho etorming of the ridge), and tho address given is "A shellholo in Hell." The cpistlo runs: "Thanks for your kind letter. I am still well, but rmito discouraged. I have, just Teccived iifty cigarettes from Coporal Karl Noiso from Loiivain in Belgium, a sausage and twenty cigarettes from my Bister, and the day More yesterday fifty cigarettes, writing material, and sweets from my Taubchen (little dove). In my reflection, 1 shared them out with my companions in misery. You have no idea, what it is like—fourteen days passed in hellish firo day and night. In this marvellously beautiful weather wo crouch together in holes and await our doom. The dead here are piled up ];y their artillery alone, which is far superior to ours. Tho night through we lie prepared for action with gas masks on our faces, as Tommy fires gas shells and threo or four hundredweight of aorial torpedoes all nijht. No trench work, as it is not lo be thought of with shrapnel all night. The wounded and poisoned are being continually collected in groups and sent oil'; many dead, too, from gas poisoning. Up to now our division—only threo regimentshas lost .1-100 men in barely threo months. The Fonrth llegimeiit is in Macedonia. Wo are quito helplss against the English. Every day the English fetch over some of those in. the front trench, or, rather, hole. What are the poor fellows to do? Everyono refuses to go to the front line. Wo wait all night in increased readiness for notion. Wo can no longer sit or lie down. Our heads ache with tho gas. Our ■ cigarettes taste of gas. Tho Din. steel shell would drive a lion mad, and its effect is indescribable. Our artillery cannot firo in the daytime. Tommy notices it at onco and it all dies away. A terribly devastated region. Three days more and we shall go right up to tho front line, again for live days. Wo all look forward with joy to being niado prisoners. Nowhere can a man be worso off, not even amoiiff Hottentots. Such a pitiful life—no food, no drinking water all days, and the sun burns. At midnight, dinner, and at three in the morning, coffee, but not always, as in every act there is dnncer to one's life. If wo aro not soon relieved we shall go mad; we are already all muddled. There aro artillery, lntuntry, and flying mon from Arras horo. They say Arras was tho Golden Ago compared with, this tirao in Hell. At least, they had galleries there; wo have nothing here The English want to shoot us down, not to mako peace. They do not need infantry. Their artillery is enough. Wo dare not lot a glimpse of us be scon during the daytime. Fifteen to livo and twenty flying men aro fifteen to thirty yards over our position, and as soon as they catch sight of anyone they signal with their machine-guns, and lor half an hour heaviest shells «ro whistling over tho position."