PLAGUE OF RATS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 34, 10 February 1916, Page 2

PLAGUE OF RATS.

NEW FEATURE OF TRENCH WAR

A plague of rota lias descended upon the French, and, no doubt, also the English lines in France. In the Matin a soldier thus describes the invasion, which, he says, is 'worse than that of the Germans.

“Trenches, communications, fields, woods, houses, cellars, and barns are choked with them. You have them holding congresses at night in the busiest roads, and having concerts by day in tlie most crowded villages. You literally march on top of them. They breed and breed, and launch themselves into assaults on the cantonments, like the Germans on the Yser, by battalions en masse. “Like the Bodies, they ar e beginning to be tortured by hunger, and the shortage of food —which in their case is due to ho blockade —makes them capable of the utmost ‘audaciousness.’ The other morning I saw a cyclist whose tyres had been half-devoured by a platoon of rats. The other night some of our men had their surgical packets, which they usually keep in the insitb pocket of their capes, attacked and carried off.

“Woo to the man who goes to sleep with a piece of chocolate in his trousers: lie Avill wake up to find himself without his chocolate, and almost without his trousers. . . ”