CRACKING OF BONES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 140, 6 November 1914, Page 8

CRACKING OF BONES.

GALLOPING OVER THE DYING. I | FRENCH GUNNERS SHUDDER. j HAUNTED BY AWFUL SCENES. I I i | A glimpse of some of the wor.it hor- • rors of the war in France, in which an : avalanche of artillery and cavalry ride over fields thickly strewn with dead, has been given by a wounded French gunner to a comrade in hospital. His , story is related in an English paper just I arrived.

"Never, never shall I forget that most terrible scene when we rushed our horses and heavy guns across a field covered all over with the bodies of dead and dying German soldiers. .

"We do not really sec the damage done by our shell which explodes among the enemy. We do not see how the 1 bodies arc cut and torn to pieces, but as ve swept across the field like a devastating storm, we heard the cracking of bones under our horses' feet and under the gun wheels, and the guns tottered as if they were running through a new ploughed field. They heeled over when they passed over two human bodies simultaneously, and every now and again the horses staggered and stumbled and slipped in their mad run over those hundreds and hundreds of corpses.

"I did not venture to look about. I kept my eyes steadily fixed on a distant point or at my horse's neck, but that did not prevent me from hearing, and I did bear blood-stirring cries of agony and pain and despair, mingled With moaning and weeping, which dominated, the fearful noise of galloping horses and guns. Most horrible of all were the erics of terror of those who, though seriously wounded, had hitherto escaped death, and now saw approaching at a furious rate a devastating aval lanclie of guns and horses, which would, next moment, crush those, still breathing breasts ami stamp'■?tfa..r i ut of their, bodies. The blood-Soaked soil hail Hot yet becu able to drink all the blood shed over it, and pools had formed, and led liquid mud spattered horses and men as they galloped through it. "Only ©iiea 1 bad more than a mere glimpse of this scene of horror. It was when my horse Slipped and foil on on;> knee, and I looked (16wri a moment. 1 raised my head again, though, for 1 saw on my left a man—a .wreck of a man—spring to his feet and make a Wild gesture with his arms, s* if to stop the deadly avalanche. He was knocked down by the horses of a gun next ta mine, and I actually heard the smashing of his bones. This* maddening vision has ever since haunted me."