A RACE WITH DEATH.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 254, 6 April 1915, Page 3

A RACE WITH DEATH.

ORDEAL OF GERMAN SOLDIERS.

HARRIED BY SHELLS,

(By Kenneth Kinninmont, Special Correspondent to the London Express.) Northern France, February (i. Six Germans were killed in an old farmhouse near La Bassee the other day. .It was a comparatively small incident in the day's fighting, but the manner of their death provides one of the most dramatic incidents of the war. The farmhouse looked innocent enough; there was such an air of quietude about it, such an absence of life, that it might have 'been deserted. There was no'flicker of light in its windows at night—nothing to arouse suspicion, until an observer, through powerful glasses, noticed the telephone wires which unobstrusively radiated from the building. It seemed strange that such a house should have a telephone at all. The discovery was reported, and by way of precaution a shell was dropped on the building.

HOUSE EMPTIED. .Those who watched the effect of the shot saw the door open in the side of the house. Six men came hurrying out. Some of them were carrying books and papers. They ran so fast that there was no time to pick off one of them, and disappeared into a large barn a short distance away. The gun was turned on the barn, and a shell sent crashing through it. The officer who was directing the fire, watching through his glasses, saw presently five men only emerge from that frail shelter, and two of them almost dragced a third back into the house from which they had fled.

Another shell smashed its way into the farmhouse. Three men rau out. They could all run—apparently tlicv had deserted their wounded comrades. Perhaps the fifth man, too, was wounded; perhaps some splinter of shell had put him out of his suspense. Or he may have thought he had found some safe hiding place. No one knows; those who watched the effect of the shells could only conjecture—and count the running men. I TIIE LAST STAND.

The three desperate, hunted men could find no bettor shelter than the shatter- ] ed outhouse from which they had al- j ready once fled. They dashed into it; ' hut they must have known that they were doomed; that they were delaying death by moments. One can picture them cowering there, counting their own heart-beats, waiting for the shell that was to end the ghastly business. The shell came, but not the end. It seemed incredible that anyone could come out alive of the burning debris of that outhouse—but the incredible happened. One man dashed out of that inferno, and ran, bent double, and like a hunted thing, back into the farmhouse. He was the last seen of the six, hecause another shell was sent erasing into the farmhouse and another, ami then another. He did not attempt to escape again; he made no sign of surrender; and the farmhouse began to burn. Then the telephone wire was cut.