IN THEIR OWN TRAP.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 154, 25 November 1914, Page 5

IN THEIR OWN TRAP.

I AN J NCI DENT OF THE WAR. A wounded private of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who has just been invalided home, describes in the following interview a now device tlio Germans have adopted for checking the Allies' progress in the battle of the Aisne. < 'IAII approaches to German positions are mined," the Highlander states, "and surrounded l>y barbed wire entanglements. Another device that is new to me is the making of quagmires in front of the trenches, usually by digging extra trenches a few hundred feet from the real ones, throwing in the loose clay, and then flooding tliom, so that you get a ditch of liquid mud. ''One day a French infantry detachment was advancing finely against the German position until they stumbled into one of these bogs, and just a 8 they were stuck fast they were treated to a fiendish hail of rifle and artillery Are. They were dreadfully cut up, and though they got away in the end, there [ was no question of continuing the atI tack in that quarter that day. In retiring the Frenchmen were pursued by a body of German cavalry, who forgot all about the bog that had done for the Frenchmen. They dashed right into it, and stuck there, so that they made a fine target for our chaps. "We moved closer, jvnrl a battery our artillery opened ion them at' the same time, so that they got it pretty" hot while they were floundering about in the pit they had dug for others.. Barbed wire entanglements are teir times worse than those we found in South Africa. Usually they are hidden away in the long glass, and you don't see them until they catch you in the legs and bring you doivn. That's the signal for the enemy to start firing at you, and many of onr clmps have been badly used up there. However, we're getting up to the dodge, aand we frequently discover the. wires before it's too late. Now we call the wires 'mug racks,' because it's really only the 'mugs' who get eaugkt I on them."