GERMAN MAN=TRAPS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 209, 15 September 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

GERMAN MAN=TRAPS.

CUNNING THICKS OF AN UNSCRUPULOUS FOE. "Clever," said the observant chaplain, "is no word for the Boche when it comes to un-knightly tricks. We're for ever checkmating some new dodge, and plumbing new depths of hook-or-crook warfare." Of course, all scruples are condemned by Clausewitz, the true Pruss'an "god"' of war. "Wir liaben kein Mitleid!" is the U-boat command, er's reply to every protest from his victim—"We can have no pity!" Hence the hideous passion for mantraps which marks the trail of the German in all fields from Luneville to East Africa wilds. At Luneville our fellows found 50 gallons of rum in a railway truck, and were taught a terrible lesson in abstinence after tasting this loot. For the stuff had been dc*l .berate!; poisoned! HIDEOUS TRICKS. African jungle tracks were laid with traps of really diabolic ingenuity. Ho!, low logs, each containing a hive of wild hoes half stupified by smoke, were hidden jn the long grass and linked with tripwires. An incautious touch, and white flags appeared in near-by trees, giving sharpshooters in wait the exact range. At the same time the hives were automatically uncovered, and the bees loosed in blind clouds of fury upon everything that lived and moved. Among the British troops caught in this amazing trap was a company of the Loyal North Lancashires, who, at a moment's notice, had both beos and bulets to contend with. Machine-guns, too, were trained upon the trap, and our -infortunate men liad a terrible time, being horribly stung in face and hands as well as temporarily blinded One man dropped his weapon fairly maddened with stings, of which over a hundred were later on extracted by the medical officer.

It was the mm<> in South-West Africa, which has now ceased to exist as a German colony. Botha himself was all but blown up by peculiar land mines, which killed one of his staff. Another of our officers, Colonel F Brennan, of the South African Irish found ten mines la.id across a roadway only e : ght feed wide. A little iron pin came just to the surface. And this passed down through .a pipe, to rest at last upon a glass tube full of sulphuric acid. Slight pressure broke this tube and fulminated a mass of blasting gelatine, of which there was enough in each charge to kill every living soul within a zone of a hundred yards. "We had men blown to fragments on that road," Colonel Brennan mourns. "Others were blinded or deformed. One wheel of my own car just grazed a detonating pin. An eighth o£ an inch to the left, and no funeral would have been necessary for me or my companion? - ' 'HATE-SQUADS' " WORK. On the Russian front these "treadmines" have been used with serious effect in the forests of the Middle Dvina. And in the western trenches ''hatesquads "are continually at work devising traps for the incautious. "What about Ireland ?" suddenly appears upon a board "across the way." A daredevil in our lines will lead out a patrol after dark to capture that taunt—a vastK more perilous feat than appears at first glance. For at a touch a bomb-attachment shows itself with murderous crash. Or a flare sails up into night skies, and \ machine-gun opens upon exposed men with cruel effect before they can take cover. Even in Gallipoli our troops encountered these German tricks. The Turks laid " wolf-pits" with ultra-Pins sian craft, and tiie same contagion of Kultur spread to the Seuuss: of the Libyan desert.

In early days of tno war our enemy excavated the French and Flemish roads to lay traps tor our cavalry and the French. Quite apart from mining the bridges, five hundred open barrels were buried in the highway between Uerchem Sainte Agathe and the Grand Bigard. The surface was made to appear quite normal with branches and earth. Then a few cteeoy Uhlans or dragoons would canter along a safe line of road. Better imagined than described was the plight of pursuing cavalry advancing in pursuit at the charge. Steel effigies of dead Germans have been found to contain living marksmen irorn the Jager regiments; and the British soldier who collects trophies m the field must now beware of ghastly surprises. At Hooge, for example. ; ■'; unfortunate Irishman stooped to pick up a glittering helmet—and was blown to pieces by the bomb hidden beneath it! Dummy figures, German flags, boxes of cigars, and bottles of wine—all these and similar flotsam of the tide of war are now strongly suspect, so that our men are extremely careful as they sweep over the stricken field where the Germans have given ground.

ANYTHING AND ANYHOW "Denuoch" was the characteristic watchword which the Kaiser wrote in the War Album o£ the Vienna City Council. It means "anyhow," and 13 undoubtedly the keynote of Prussian method in war. Consider Colonel Erancke, of Swakopmund, who poisoned all the wells with arsenical sheepdip in flagrant v ; olation of the very 4.8.C. of civilised war.

General Botha warned this dastard that "the supgort of the German military authorities" was no defence lor such an outrage. Other water supplies were "thoroughly infected with disease" by Kultur s officer in chargenotably at Pforte and Ghabib. It was little less than miraculous that not one ol our men was poisoned, .although

'more arsen'c was used in the wells than would be required to dip all the sheep in tiu Union." "We anticipated a war of men," says <M. Albert Thomas, the French Minister ol .Munitions, "and we are reduced to fighting flames, fumes, and explosives.'Personal valour is indeed of small account in this mechanical war. Oi •ouise, when it comes to hand-grips in the trench the German goes to the wall But as a deviser o£ man-traps. Fritz is distantly to be feared; 'his electric wires, his fearsome tYous-de-loup, or staked pits full ofwater and < unning- !\ concealed. He taught the Austrians all they knew of "avalanche-warfare." How by shelling or exploding nrnes to loose enormous masses of ice and earthwhole forests in fact, that .slide down and overwhelm the Italians upon lower levels. These falls choke the Alpine tracks and obliterate railroads. Then »hen the Germans evacuate a position :t : s safe to assume it fairly bristles with bidden death. Even the ancent f-tepl-jawed man-trap was [ound in use in Serbia, where Mackcnsen's men laid these cruel engines in dense woodland paths to seize the unsuspecting. "Do you call :t playing the game?" oneofour Staff asked a captured German officer. "Cerltainly." was tin l reply—"if the gamo i> to win the war." And be hinted man-traps vastly more terrible when at length "our back is to the wall and the fight of despa'r succeeds our great hid for world-power."