SOLDIERS SENT TO SLEEP.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 163, 16 December 1914, Page 3

SOLDIERS SENT TO SLEEP.

EFECTS OF LYDDITE, WOKE AMONG THE DEAD. "I do not know what people at homt think of the war, whetner tliey have got , the right idea or not, but what both sides have been going through is more horrible than anything that could have 7 been imagined," 'writes Lieut. E. H. T. 1 Broadwood, of the Ist Norfolk Regiment. "I think, too, that the Germans are ' having a worse time of it than the French and ourselves. Just lately they J have simply been massacred by us, and \ letters have been found on dead and | wounded saying what a hellish time they have been having, and hoping for 1 the end of the war. Their infantry cannot stand against ours; this has ; been proved again and again, but their [ strong point is their artillery. They seem to pick up targets quickly, and they seem to outnunibeif our guns everywhere. "Curiously enough, a letter written* by a German officer says the same about our guns, and says we are superior in artillery. So what we think may it imagination, but it seems to me that our artillery is weaker. Where we can dig ourselves right into the earth and cave right underneath, this protects us from bullets and most shrapnel; but ' it is practically impossible to be safe from the bigger high explosive shells. The enemy have an uncanny way of finding out where one is, and are especially fond of shelling brigade headquarters if they can find them. This may also be imagination, or the gool system of espionage, or else chance, for certainly our brigade had to move three times in three successive days because of annoyance by shells. Some of the staff took refuge in the cellar, where a shell burst inconveniently close, the second shell knocked at the cellar door. The lyddite high explosive shells make the- most fuss, but I am told are very local in effect, though I have not tried! They say, too, that they stun people sometimes < for the time, and, apropos of this, a Cornwall officer, Lieutenant B (whose father is a Unionist M.P.) told me the other day that at the Marnc one of the Cornwall companies had a hot time with lyddite, and were knocked down all over the place. However, the next day they rejoined: they said they 'had gone to sleep' without knowing it at 5 the previous afternoon. This, they i told me, corresponded with the time the Germans' attack took place. The men woke up in the middle of the night, and found themsclvta lying among the dead. They saw Germans moving all about them in a wood, and so they feigned death. When the Germans retired, they rejoined their regiment, apparently none the worse." A newspaper correspondent describes a scene which met the eyes of the French when they entered a chateau occupied by the Germans, which had just been bombarded. On entering the drawing-room they found a company of W'urtoniburgers petrified in action. Some were standing at the windows taking aim, with their fingers still pressed on the trigger. Others were playing cards and pmoking cigarettes. An officer was there ' with his mouth open in the act of dictating an order. The figures looked absolutely lifelike, and had preserved the positions which they had occupied < an hour before, when they unconsciously breathed death.