SHEL-HOLE IN HELL.

Taihape Daily Times, 23 November 1917, Page 3

SHEL-HOLE IN HELL.

A German letter found upon the! Mcssines Ridge gives a good picture of what the enemy is now enduring, and what he thinks of the war, says : June 6, and the address given is j '"A Shell-Hole in Hell": "You have no idea what it is like • —fourteen days passed in hellish fire day and night —in this marvellously beautiful weather. We crouch together in holes and await our doom. The dead hero are piled up by their artillery alone, which is far superior to | ours. "The night through we lie prepared for action, with gas-maslts on our faces, as Tommy fires gas shells and three or four hundredweight of aerial torpedoes. all night. No trench work, as it is not to be thought of with shrapnel all night. The wounded and poisoned are being continually collected in groups and sent on, many dead, too, from gas poisoning. "Up to now our division—only three regiments —has lost 3,400 barely three months. The fourth regiment is in Macedonia. We are quite helpless against the English. Every day [ the English fetch over some of those in the front trench, or rather hole. "What are poor fellows to do? Everyone refuses to go to the front line. We wait all night in increased readiness, for action. We can no longer sit or lie down. Our heads ache from the gas. Our cigarettes taste of gas. The 23-eentimetre steel shell would drive a lion mad, and its effect is indescribable. Our artillery cannot fire in the daytime, Tommy notices it at once, and it all dies away. "A terribly devastated region. Three days more and we shall go right up to the front line again for five days. We all look forward with joy to beingmade prisoners. We do not touch the hand-grenades. It be useless. Nowhere can a man be fworse off, not pititful life—no food, no drinkingwater all day, and the sun burns. If we are not soon relieved, we shall go mad! We are already all muddled. "The English want to shoot us down not to make peace. They do not need infantry; their artillery is enough. We dare not let a glimpse of us be seen during the daytime. Fifteen to twenty-five flying men are over our j position, and as soon as they catch sight of anyone they signal with their, machine-guns and for half an hour the heaviest shells are whistling over the ' position. " There is no doubt that many such letters as this are written in the German lines these days, but there is every doubt as to whether the censors let any of them pass.