ARMOURED FORT WIPED OUT

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17279, 21 September 1916, Page 10

ARMOURED FORT WIPED OUT

STORY OF A MAD GERMAN OFFICER. (London “ Daily Mail.”) General Dali’ Olio, the Italian Munitions Minister, who has just returned to Paris alter visiting tne Somme, is enthusiastic over the achievements of the French gunners. These he sats. surpass all belief. Where for months the Germans had multiplied their formidable entrenchments nothing remains. . , ~ n , ~ Another testimony to the effective work of the French “heavies” comes from an artillery officer, who made the following statement to the correspondent of the Pans “ Liberte ” : “ The objective of my battery was a small hutredoubtable 'fort. Everything possible, had been done to make it proof against attack, including the .use of armourplating and concrete shelters 40ft deep. We had orders, cost what it might, to take the fort. More than 250 large shells wore rained upon it in less than six hours, and one after another its defence works disappeared in a cloud of smoke. “ Some hours later the officers of the battery went to see what was left of the fort. Under a mass of ruins-and debris of various sorts they came upon a dying non-commissioned officer —a Bavarian. As wo knelt beside him he toll us this tragic story: ‘Thirty-two men held the fort, commanded by a lieutenant. After ten hours’* oombardment half the men had disappeared, the victims of a terrible death. Two were decapitated, and of three others amon<* whom a shell fell wo never found"the slightest trace. The survivors, huddled together at the bottom of the underground shelters, awaited the end. A new explosion shook the cavern. throwing us one against the other. “ ‘ Suddenlv a bright flame sprang up in the far corner of our shelter, and we knew it was on nre. We were seized with terror, immediately intensified bv the sight of our lieutenant, who had gone mad and was firing his revolver at an imaginary enemy. In the midst of the flickering flames an indescribable massacre took place. The officer, his frenzy increasing every moment, killed all his men one after another. He perished himself in the flames.’ “ As for the Bavarian, he escaped by climbing over the mass of debris and reached the open air. There ho was knocked over by a bursting shell and almost buried under a block of stone. He died the same night in a French ambulance.”