KRUPP GUN SHELLED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 149, 19 November 1914, Page 7

KRUPP GUN SHELLED.

USELESS MASS 'OF STEEL. BRILLIANT BRITISH DASH. One of tthe iar-farhed Kfupp guns, wliich can only bo moved by forty-two horses, was destroyed at the Aisne by 'the British horse artillery with a superlative skill and daring. The Germans, says the JOondon Evening Xbws, were moving one of their biggest guns, drawn by forty ;odd horses, behind a range of hills. They had to pass a gap which exposed thcin to view. The movement •of the gun was screened by a body of Hussars, but something went amiss with the cavalry at the critical moment, and our gunners, catching sight of the movement, promptly made up their minds to have a go. The great artillery duel was raging at the full, shells were falling likc'l«LU. There was a sudden clatter of wheels, and out into the open rushed a battery of horse artillery. The war horses, driven at headlong speed, thundered over the uneven ground at racing rate. The •gun<-carriagcs, almost lifted from the ground, by the headlong Tush, bounced over the broken surface, while guns were trained on them from every angle, while shells were bursting around them. Still the gunners rode bravely on 'through that avalanche of destruction

—it was Britain at her test. They reached the angle they had raced for, and the guns slipped into action as though it was a trial day at the Cur•ragh. The 'big gun of the enemy, with its long train of horses, came from behind 'the screen of hills to cross the second gap, flanked by a Bquad of cavalry. 1 Then the field artillery spoke, its deeptoned growling scarcely heard amidst the deafening thunder that was shaking the whole battlefield like the booming of breakers on cliff-crowned coasts. Shell followed shell with lightning speed and deadly accuracy, the little band of (British gunners slipping round their guns with cat-like activity and coolness.

The squad of cavalry in the gap felt the iron hail, and men and horses went down in tangled heaps. The enemy tried valiantly to rush the gun across the miry ground to the safety of the hills ahead. The horses went down and the men With them; then, like hammers on an anvil, the shells fell on the huge giey gun that Krupps had 'built for the siege of Paris, until it was a useless mass oJ steel.