WAR NOTES

Taihape Daily Times, 21 December 1917, Page 6

WAR NOTES

THE FIRST SHELL FIRED BY AMERICAN GUNNERS

Paris, October 28

The Yankees have entered into actual warfare with the B’bches' with a vigour and purpose that bodes ill for the Hnu and his kind. Great significance is being attached to the good omens marking the actual entry among all American troops, who are tugging at their leashes and burning up in their anxiety to get into the game. All through the American camps these two facts are being dilated upon (writes the San Francisco Chroniple’& correspondent)(,

The first shell fired by the Americans made an exact bull’s-eye. It was aimed at a group of twelve or fifteen Boehes landed in the middle, and when the smoke cleared and the dust settled there were no Boehes. The gun was aimed by college boys, as cool and collected and as coldly scientific as if they had been in practice on their own peaceful campus.. A Lithe, an undersized but tremendously enthusiastic Irish lad, did the firing and the shell was preserved. It will be inscribed with the date and sent to President Wilson as a souvenir.

The first man over the top was a young lieutenant, just a fine type of the cool, nervy American who can look -death in the face and smile. The Germans, forty yards away, uncourteously fired upon him, whereupon he whisked ( out an automatic /pistol, killed one, wounded two, and then bethought himself to slip back into the trenches. A moment later he went back over the top and collected the three empty shells from his automatic. One he will keep, one goes to his parents, and the other to a certain fair young person whom he left back in the States.