GUN FIRE INFERNO.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1454, 2 October 1915, Page 2

GUN FIRE INFERNO.

A Wkujnoton officer, now serving with the British Army in France and Belgium, writes an interesting letter about the conditions of campaigning in the trenches around Ypres. "It is certainly the rowdiest place I ever was in. I really don’t know yet which is the worst, the day or the night, for they seem to attack or counter-attack at any old time this way. The guns are very close and seem to have been collected here in hundreds. When they really open out the place is like an inferno—big siege guns with their huge shells humming wearily along, the long range ‘mothers’ whistling overhead, and the howitzers travelling up and up, all seem to have a stately tone compared with the 75’s and other quick-firers. Add to these a few mountain batteries and some hundreds of machine-guns, and throw in the grenade and mortar-bomb explosions with the rattle of the rifle fire, and try to imagine what the pandemonium is like when they’re all going at once. But after all the only sound we worry much about is the rattle of the machine-guns. When you hear them shooting, then you know that men are on the move. The machine-gun is the most deadly thing of all.”