"ENGLISHMAN AIRMAN HAS DONE IT."

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 77, 30 March 1916, Page 7

"ENGLISHMAN AIRMAN HAS DONE IT."

EXPLOSION AT LILLE AMMUNITION STORE. A graphic description of the terrible results • of the explosion at the German ammunition stores near Lille, which was mentioned in the German communique of January 12th, is told by Herr Karl Rosner, correspondent of the Lokal Anzeiger. Herr Rosner was staying at an hotel at Lille, which was partly occupied by the German army staff. » « ' "At 4.30 a.m." he writes, "a hurricane disturbed my rest. My bed was lifted up and came down a little further away. The whole house shook, so that my watch fell from the marble-topped table to the. ground Suddenly all three windows were flung wide open, the curtains fluttered, and at the same time there was a terrific roar and then the crash of glass and masonry, as if a giant in his mad rage were! smashing thousands of windows. "My first thought was —'Now one of those big shells has landed in the house.'

"I sprang to the eleclric switch, but there was only a short flash, and everything was dark again.' Everywhere in the neighbourhood one heard the noise of crashing glass. The whole house was wide awake. Doors were opened and s'ammed again. Some frightened women cried. I reflected that this was no aerial bomb. I know them from experience, and against shells of heavy calibre, a cellar would be of no use. The best would be to wait and see, and I went to bed again.

"That terrific roar. The cause of which I did not know! No repetiton. Only the low thundering of far-away field guns hammering ' through the night." Some hours later Herr Rosner s'aw the destruction. Tens of thousands of broken windows, and excited groups of inhabitants in the streets, all shouting. One cried: "An English airman has hit the ammunition depot." Another: "It was an Englishman who did it." Later Herr Rosner "learned that the accident had happened on the southern ramparts of Lille in a casemate where ammunition of one of the pioneer detachments was stored. The guard of German Landstrum men were killed. Houses on both sides of the Rou de Douai were razed to the ground. "Where once were workmen's dwellnigs there was now nothing else but wreckage.