NINE MILES OF DEAD BODIES

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 76, 28 November 1914, Page 7

NINE MILES OF DEAD BODIES

GRAPHIC NARRATION BY FRENCH SOLDIER. ARMOURED TRAINS CAPTURED. CALAIS, September 22. I have ■ come here from Amiens,' where i arrived on Friday morning, telegraphs a Central News correspondent on September £2. I fell Run the temporary safe keeping of the French Sure to Generate, and was kept for nearly two days as a suspected German spy. On Saturday afternoon, as I was looking out of the door of my prison on the courtyard, I saw a soldier rf the chasseurs a pied, covered with dust, ride in on a bicycle with news of the great action which was being fought just over thirty miles away. His comrades in the courtyard, probably a hundred or more, crowded round him, and, putting him on a pedestal formed of upturned boxes, asked him to tell the story. With his coat flung open, and his ride still in his hand, he began to leccunt what he knew of the fight. “It is hell out there,” he said — “on the road towards St. Quentin. We have been .fighting for three days now, hand to hand most cf the lime. Continuous Charging. “We have charged me Germans with infantry and cavalry almost continuously, and the noise of the shells and the bullets in the oir has been such that you might, at times, have fancied yourself in u railway station, with express trains dashing through. And they have charged us, too. “We have fought over and over the same old ground until now there ■re almost nine miles of dead bodies, and we go on lighting over the corpses cf our friends and enemies until :he road becomes impassable and we light'on another. “ But, men Dieu, we arc giving them • c-rnething with the bayonet,” he ex-

claimed, ami thereupon, while his companions cheered, he drew his bayonet from its scabbard, fixed it, to his rifle and began to illustrate, with : Imost ghastly reality, how the French infantrymen have bayonetted the Germans. “ Some of them,” he proceeded, - ie.d to make us believe that they were dead when we charged them, but they did not deceive us. We just luck out bayonets into them and [made them squeal and writhe like pigs •iht.il they were really dead, i “Oh! le bon Dieu, the dead bodies! Nine miles of them, as I have told v:u before, and artillery driven right over them, time and time again, until hundreds of them had been crushed right into the ground. We had never the need to bv-.-v Them." He told further grim details, and then flung among hU friends, who forthwith kicked it about the yard like a football, the shako of a German hussar which lie had brought with him as a trophy. Two Trains Destroyed. The chasseur a pied, now with a bottle cf wine in his hand, continued his story. “ Let we tell you, mes uamarades,” said he, “how two German armoured trains, full of soldiers and arms and ammunition, were destroyed by cur men, and how we captured their cargoes and annihilated their passengers. “ Out beyond St Quentin one of our soldiers had managed to tap a telephone wire connecting two German stations. “ While listening the other evening he heard one operator give some crder s to the other relative to the dispatch of these two trains, and, instantly cutting off the German soldier at. the other end of the wire, himself answered in German that everything was all right and that the trains would be dispatched. “He did this after getting full details, and then, connecting up with the other station, he ordered the trains to be sent. To jump on a bicycle and dash to the field headquarters of his own brigade did not rake him very long, and soon our men had made an ambush, planted their mitrailleuses, and dynamited a section of the track. “At the stated hour the two German armoured trains came thundering along-. The first one went off the rails, the second collided with it. Our mitrailleuses were trained upon them, and those of-their occupants who did not surrender were quickly annihilated. The slaughter must have been very heavy.” When night fell and the doors of the prison were closed the chasseur was still telling his story, but 1 could hear no more of it. On Sunday the general staff of a German division were brought prisoners into Amiens.