BROWN CATS!

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 748, 24 February 1915, Page 7

BROWN CATS!

Extracts from a German Boldier's letter in. the Frankfurter Zeitung show that the German army ia beginning to realise the fighting qualities of the Indian troops. The soldier writes: "To-day for the first time'we had to fight against the Indians, and the devil knows those brown rascals are not to be underrated. At first we spoke with contempt of the Indians. To-day we learned to look at them in a different light. "For three days we lay in our trenches under an uninterrupted shell fire from the English, and were lacking in the barest necessaries, as only at night time could we obtain provisions. Water we had enough both above and below us, but we were hungrv. The English seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in showering shells on us. When for three days it had rained shells; and the British thought we Were beaten to a jelly, they had then in store for us a visit from their brown allies. "The devil knows what the English had put into those fellows. Anyhow those who stormed our lines seemed either drunk or possessed with an evil spirit. With fearful shouting, in comparison with which our hurrahs are like the whining of a baby, thousaads o£ those brown forms rushed upon us as suddenly aB if they were shot out of a fog, so that at first we were completely taken by surprise. "At a hundred metres we opened a destructive fire which mowed down hundreds, but in spite of that the others advanced, springing forward like cats and surmounting obstacles with unexampled agility. In no time they were in our trecnheß and truly these brown enemies were not to be despised. "With butt-ends, bayonets, swords and daggers we fought each other, and we had bitter hard work which, however, was lightened by reinforce-, ments which arrived quickly, before we drove the fellows out of the trenches."