DUDS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 229, 24 November 1916, Page 8 (Supplement)

DUDS.

BY AN ADJUTANT. To a public which has grown wise in the technicalities of war it is prolvably quite unnecessary to explain that "duds" are shells whih refuse to burst. Sometimes they arc called "blinds," and though the authorities are apt to object to the use of slang in daily sum. mares or similar official reports, "dud" is ton descriptive a word to be ignored entirely. After all, there is no harm in ail intelligence report being readable as well as accurate. "Of 24 77mm. shells in L 2U Sector 12 failed to explode" is definite enough; but many a tired brigade major would as soon have put, "Two dozen Little Willies came into Regent street, and half were dudi;."

Our feelings towards duds depend, of course, on whether they are British or the enemy's. What we think and sayabout our own duds —oh, yes, we have some too —can he left to the imagination of the reader. Buit the duds which the Germans send us are received with, a curious sense of grim satisfaction. Curious, because after all, if a dud gets one in the neck one's number is up just as certainly as if the shell had burst in the orthodox way. But the underlying feeling seems to be satisfaction at the waste of their energy: the shell, the explosive, tho elaborate fuse, the using u.p of transport, and the wearing out of a gun, all useless because some delicate adjustment is the hundredth part of an inch wrong. THE PADRE AND THE WHIZZBANG. Each man in the trenches has Irs own talcs of narrow escapes—apparently, if every .shell burst none of us woul l lie alive at all. But the tiouble about duds is that they sometimes change their minds. One particularly deadly type of shell has what is known as " delayed action." It penetrates a building or a dug-out and then bursts, normally a mere fraction of a second later; but one choice specimen delayed its action for four days, and then decided to go off. The margin between bursting and not bursting is extremely small. A touch from the hoof of a. transport mule was enough in one case to explode a shell, wagon and team being entirely destroyed. In any case tho handling of duds is a dangerous business. The more one knows about them the more inclined one is to leave them alone. Innocent and guileless mortals like padres and transport officers are much more reckless than gunners themselves. Not so long ago the writer met a padre cycling along a bumpy bypath with a mysterious bundle wrapped in paper and tied to his handle-bars with string. Quite proudly ho opened l the parcel, and showed me a dud whizz-bang which he had carried four or five miles. After ] had dropped his souvenir into the nearest pond I broke the news to him that but for a merciful dispensation of Providence tho battalion yould have needed a now b'.cyclo and another padre. Bairnsfathor's picture of 'Erb removing the nose-cap of a dud! with a hammer and cold chisel is strictly historical ; aud in ono case, at least, the experiment caused ten casualties. The first thing ono green officer did with r. dud was to place it upright on the roof of his dug-out, as a kind of ornament; but the prize idiot is flie man who brings a Little Willie into the mess, plants it on the table, and says, "Does tho top screw off or pull out?" Ho only does it once. Most people very quickly realise that duds are dangerous playthings. THE UNWANTED DUD. Tho strange case of the R.T.O.'s dr.d deserves to lie placed on record. This particular shell landed near our railway transport officer, "near" meaning on his doorstep. The R.T.O. was distinctly annoyed—for some subtle reason he seemed to think the Germans were not quite playing the game. He called to a corporal of the Mounted Military Police who was riding past; tho N.C.O. stopped, but, after a glance at the shell remembered lie had to visit a control post some miles away. Ho promsed, however, to inform the Town Major, against whom he must have had some grudge. That official came, saw. and declined, gently but. firmly, to have anything to do with the jnatter. He had troubles of his own, lie said. The commander of a heavy battery was next approached, but he sent a chit explaining that he handled Britisi shells, not German. He drew attention to Routine Order No. 54,827 (a), which clearly stated thta " blind" shells would be exploded under direction of to Royal Engineers. Fortwtih a messenger was despatched to the C.R.E. During the next twenty-four hours nothing at all happened except that tho R.T.O.'s hair grew visibly greyer. Then a memo came asking for a note of the size and full description of the dud. That nearly made the R.T.O. explode. To him the shell looked like a 17-incher. but finally the diameter was fixed at eight inches. The correspondence by this time was growing to a respectable volume, the Engineers adding .another minute to say that if tho dud was brought to R.E. Yard No. !.'0 at 10 a.m. they would be delighted to explode it, but they did not seem called upon to go to the dud. The correspondence might have gone on till the end of tho war had not an infantry subaltern passed the scene with a working party. Five minutes later the R.T.O.'s dud was reposing peacefully at the bottom of the village pond. Instead of thanks, the subaltern's reward was a strafing for not minding ins own business. Such is life.