BARBED WIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1915, Page 3

BARBED WIRE.

DODGES USED AGAINST ENTANGLEMENTS.

To destroy "barbed wire entanglements successfully has become one of the chief problems of the war, and many and ingenious are the expedients that have been devised to that- end.

Tims, in the fighting round Warsaw iast January, the Germans rolled barrels of clay down tlic slopes against the lines held by the Russians on the Bzura. These, moved by their own weight, tore through the barbed wire., and the Germans, of course, followed close behind: Several times the Italians have sacrificed entire herds of their semi-wild mountain cattle by stampeding them downhill against the Austrian entanglements —a dodge reminiscent of the later stages of the Roer war, when De Wet's burghers adopted a similar plan, and with like results. The Australians and Canadians have used the lasso more than once, tearing up posts and entanglements and yanking them back into their own lines. Upon one occasion, too, a strong-armed cowboy overshot the marl;, his lariat landed in a German trench and over the head and shoulders of one of the occupants, who was forthwith dragged, struggling and kicking, out from amongst his astonished companions, and into the opposing trench some thirty yards distant. \ on Hindenburg's men, again, are reported to be in possesion of huge expanding pliers, weighing some hundredweights, that are capable of cutting entanglements to pieces at a distance >of forty yards, being projected, apparently, from the German trenches across the "dead ground," and worked by machinery at the base. Once, too, this versatile commander destroyed a section of entanglement by sending a traction engine at full speed against it—a very effective, if somewhat costly expedient,