WHAT WAS IS LIKE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 139, 5 November 1914, Page 7

WHAT WAS IS LIKE.

IN CLOSE TOUCH WITH BATTLE. CIVILIAN .WATCHES, FIGHT. . The following very interesting story of lighting is given by an American Htii.g in France to his son in Sun Fran-c.:-,co, and published in the Chronicle:— Domevre, (Moselle, France), August IS, li/M.—Dear Son—l write this letter w.th considerable doubt as to its fate, ;;■; the censors seem 10 have been 'pretty 'rgidly intercepting such li'.itle mail us ~, en route.

However, I am taking advantage of the attempted departure of our mutual friend, Mr Harris, to get into touch with irv own boy again, and assure him of his father's welfare.

As the good local folk hereabouts know me well as an American citizen, 1 nave been assured immunity, but they warned me not to *leave the house, and wo have laid up provisions for a siege, accordingly. ■ But the horrors of war have visited this beautiful valley of the Vezouse with a merciless vengeance, indeed, and I will be glad to get away as soon as travel is again possible. Just now it would be madness to attempt flight, and besides, four wounded French cavalrymen have been left in the house in our care. Imagine your father and aunt as nurses!

Yes, a horrible tattle was fought im the meadows down the hill —the fields overlooked 'by our cast window, you know. I suppose I should speak of the whole affair as a skirmish, but it was so frightful that I stood petrified at the window watching the slaughter, although I would have given the world to be far, far away at the time, your aunt and the two maids had safely -buried themselves in the wine cellar, and there was no one else in the house, as Jean and the garden man had left two weeks ago, as I wrote before, having received notice to enlist

PREPARING FOR BATTLE. I We had been watching the bravo little French Turcos working all up and down I the valley during the previous day, dig- j ging trendies and hauling field guns back and forth as busy as bees, and wc were only visited once by a party of French officers, who were kind and sympathetic, ' although they tapped Qur reservoir wit'i ' a long; iron pipe t]o some entrenchment on the" other side of the highway, and only shrugged their shoulders when I protested that we were without water j for the'house. They pointed out that! J we should have left the house when first warned, long ago, but cer«iinly could not leave now. J

The next morning was ominously quiet, not a uniform or guns was to be eeen, and we could make out the trenches only looking up the valley, while below to the west, towards. Lune--1 Tille, all appeared, serene and peaceful. At about one o'clock after lunch, (we were all too much excited to eat), we heard shooting up the valley, but could see no action until iifteen or twenty minutes later, when a gorgeous mass of charging cavalry came tearing down the wiiite road. It was at this juncture that Belle and the two girls retired to the cellar. Fascinated by the plunging advance of those lielnietc.ri, spcar-ear-rying warriors, I delayed uiy retreat to safety until I was frozen to tin: spot by a sound like the sudden ripping of canvas cloth, right in our iields below ' our road. Ye I *, my little Tureos Were ftill verv much there.

VIILAXS MOWED DOWN. Charmed by the. murderous terror of i it, I saw fully two hundred'of those prancing gallant Uhlans go down be- j ?6re the deadly French guns, before the main body of cavalry could reach the defensive trench. I don't know now whether that first tearing rattling sound I was.rifles or machine guns, but certain it was that the Germans gave no return fire until they had actually ridden full gallop over their own dead and wounded and by sheer force of numbers had ousted the Turcos from their ditch at spear*s length. Those long spers proved too great an inducement for the Turcos, and they scampered and hopped back to our field, but very few of them ran very far, as the Germans were now using

their carbines, and the meadow, as you know, is too open for any real cover_ One Turco got up almost half way to our niad before they potted him, but I knew he was doomed; because 1 had just seen all his companions drop in their tracks like so many quail.

liuns from the other side of tilo valley were now in action, but the (JSlans were a compact ami irresistible force, miLil (and I shall never forget that ghastly tableau, Frank ,to the day of niy death!, an explosion occurred in the highroad, directly under the Bolid mass of packed Uhlans. Mind von, this wa.-» down the hill across the meadow not a mile from our dining-room window.

WORK OF -\II\M-; (iUEXADK. They told me afterwards, it was a -ill of mine grenades, which seem to he gigantic bombs, buried, but fastened to a chain, 60 that -,vlnn they lly into tin; air they go up about eight or ten feet, and' explode, ! don't know how many separate steel balls. At any rate, that whole dashing cavalcade appf'-aral. to be exterminated and left a moaning, shrieking mays of horse aud man.

I I can remember nothing more iinlii the next morning, but Hello tells me I came slowly down to them in the collar and asked in a dazed way, unreasoning but insistently, where you were, Frank. I suppose I am lucky to have regained my right senses after witnessing that Micll, lm!, I wish 1 could forget-just for- ' get, everything

That we were not molested I ascribe to our distance from the road and the relatively short strete'h of highway the house directly !As it was, the Gorman soldiers (for they held our Vezouse Valley for three day's) were respectful and unintniding, once , {'hoy found we. were all old people and women in the house, and German-speaking 1 Americans at that.

FIGHTING T.Y MOONLIGHT. Of file return of the French troops and the German evacuation .Saturday night I saw little, although the moon was clear, and the noise of the fighting on the road below kept sleep far from our minds But my curiosity as regards lighting had been amply satisfied, and we kept each other company in the darkness of our cellar. Tn the morning fotir poor fellows were brought up to the house who had been found after the ] field ambulance had passed on, and who j are-too badly hurt to be moved far. One has a leg broken and has lost an arm, another ha 3 lost both lega below the knee, and the other two .are mere «rush-1 ed shells of suffering humanity. Nursing and dressiag their wounds kepi Belle and myself pretty busy, and, to tell the