THE FALL OF BELGRADE.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 January 1916, Page 5

THE FALL OF BELGRADE.

A GRAPHIC STORY. The Weekly Dispatch gives the following graphic account of the defence and fall of Belgrade: Mourning dawns in Belgrade, hushed with the sense of coming battle. The great Austrian howitzers are already hurling tons of steel on the city. A shell falls into the New Konak, the castle of the Serbian Kings, spraying with dust the chamber where hangs the full-length portrait of King l'eter in his Coronation robes, ripped by the bayonet of an Austrian vandal last winter. All. day the huge shells pound the capital with relentless, vicious energy. Mingled with the roar of the massive cannon is the dull rumble of masonry coming to earth. The noise of the guns reaches the escaping throngs, bidding them quicken their steps. Those who refuse to leave have taken refuge in their cellars or are busy turning their houses into fortresses. The Austrian and his blood-brother, the German, shall have a fitting reception. Once more night falls. The Serbians save their power; the French and the British gunners B"'c no sign. Long beams of light leap from the citadel and dance around the enemy's gun emplacements, then of a sudden die out. The darkness blots out Belgrade as with a screen of fog. Not a lamp or a gas-jet flickers anywhere—all is black and silent. It is a night of anguish and awful suspense. When the day is born the guns across the river will hammer the city with a thousand shells, and streets will disappear in a grey dust cloud. But until the light shall make Belgrade once more an artillery target it should have peace. For those who would sleep there is sleep without tumult. Thereafter will come murder and livid flash, the crash of steel against steel, and the noise of man's ivork being torn asunder with wrists forged of iron and mighty gases. The howitzers greet the morning with a rafale of lire. There is a hiss and a Bclrirr-r, and shell follow shell in a maddening, deafening hurricane. Where each shell falls the spirit of destruction reveals itself in a fountain of debris. Houses topple down like sand castles. Great holes open in the roads; always the smashing of steel against stone and brick makes part of Belgrade a ruin. The guns on the Belgrade hills return the challenge; the Serbian heavy pieces scatter death where the enemy gunners bend by their guns, but for ojio shell they send the Austrians have ten, and the unequal contest can have only one conclusion. Every fourth shell is an incendiary shell. The blinding luminance of thermite glows as the imprisoned devilment is released from its steel fetters. A flame breaks forth, first from one building, then from another, and as the smoke and fire sweep along the people rush out of their houses towards the suburbs and the southern roads. The guns are sending death into the city' iind beyond the city. As the fugitives go forward to escape the one danger they drive into another, for a wall of (ire is before them as behind them. ' The Austrians have murder in their hearts; they have closed with a curtain of Dame the exits from the city. As the smoke of the burning city ascends more shell* fall in Belgrade. The air is thick with smoke and pungent with the acrid fumes of powder. Through the ordeal of fire the inhabitants are passing like prisoners in the Middle Ages being proved for their innocence or guilt. Night comes with a fury of hate from across the river. Once more Belgrade is in darkness, save for the flames still pirouetting in fantastic shapes on the burning ruins. Boats and rafts and pontoons are being loosed on the river, and as they drift across they arc met with a tornado ru machine-gun and rifle fire and a hail of shells that sends up the. water in great spouts. Now the enemy's guns begin afresh, and from the river banks to the protecting hills is ono storm of shell, shattering and devouring all in its way. So the night passes, and morning comes again to a city in mortal agony. The German aeroplanes, like vultures scenting prey, soar over Belgrade and signal the gun positions to the gunners. The more daring travel across the .town, mark the choked roads leading from the ramparts, and what they see Semlin sees, for presently the shells are bursting amid this wretched, weary human mass, reaping for murder a rich harvest. Always that terrible hiss and shirr-; then a fearful crash, a tongue of flame, and the road running with the blood of the helpless slain. The trapped multitude sways hither and thither, but the aviators know their business. "A hundred yards -to the left; two hundred yards to the right," they signal. Good Skoda-made cannon respond well to the teaching. The air quivers with the wicked stab of scores more shells, and carnage now has full control of the battle.

Midnight is one spasm of flame and fire, shell answering shell; under, cover of the darkness infantry makes the crossing. A hundred guns arc playing on Belgrade. They are burying line after line of defenders, hurling them to death, blowing them to pieces. The Vratzar hill, where the French and British gunners work their guns until they are red hot, is blotted out in palls of smoke. There comes a time when the Vratzar hill is dumb and lifeless. The loin shells have smashed the artillery, and the shells that silence the guns silence also the men. In a pit besido the guns they have worked to tlie end they lie, beyond all sound or sense, and the hiss and tlio shirr-r of the shells that never cease make savage moan over their rude graves as for those whose familiar music in life is the roar of the guns. With the Austrian heavy pieces to protect the landing the enemy ir.fan try set foot on the outskirts of the town; then it is man for man. The Serbian vanguard stand their ground. Over their dead bodies only shall iho hated Austrians advance. The lean bayonet must find its own opening. )n this hand-to-hand struggle the guns ore useless; it is the- bayonet'* how. -£ert mid Teuton fight it out i". the cold October night. Years o': haU and bittenc«s find expression in these a'f'ut momenta as steel is parried or stee 1 . goes home. The pontoons pour ever more battalions into the town, so that heroism falls faint for numbers. The thin Serbian line is a heap of corpses, but the town is still to be won—and another day dawns. Through the narrow streets the Austrian troops press their way yard by yard. Always progress is barred to them by the bodies of tho heroic inhabitants. They must kill before they can go forward, but it is a life for a life. There are barricades drawn across the streets, and behind them Serbian veterans who were young when King Peter was young arc stretched, firing with sure aim at the advancing enemy masses. From the houses pours a torrent of hand grenades; every window is a loophole through which the barrel of a riflo protrudes. This is not the Serbian army thi! Austrians arc fighting; it is tho Serbian people. They know that death is X i'B .DStfiott »RYfe>SL». tM hfttw

to die fighting. The women have coot' up from their cellars, and either load their husbands' rifles or Are rifle* themselves. They, too, know how fittingly to meet death. These narrow etr#t±» along which the Austrian officers seek $0 drive their men are found iropAmbk, The guns must do the work before which infantry falters. The shells crash UkJ# the houseß, and first one terrace, then another on the hill which is Belgrade'* foundation, are blown lip. Again th» infantry go forward, again they are airt with a fearful hai) of grenades and bullets; so in desperation parties storm groups of houses, and inside engage the occupants in combats where no quarter is sought and tio quarter is given. Not a house shows i white flag; all, to be seen arc the barrels of the'rifles Hid the opening and shutting of wiodMfe ns grenades arc thrown. The whole nutviving population, women and children as well ns old men, support the reniit* mice. Not until Belgrade is soaked la blood and every house has its heap Of corpses are the Austrian infantry frM of the street. In the citadel of Belgrade, itself the Serbian garrison still hold out. They see Belgrade tumbling in ruin; they hear the screams of the murdered poptfclation and the crackle and spil of the rifles. Then their end comes too. The Austrian howitzers kill or wound newly jail the brave defenders; a storming forw does the rest. So the fourth night it spent and the fifth morning is ushered in, with all Belgrade a litter of dWld bodies. Serbian in his peasant cOftMM and Austrian in his blue-grey coat together just as they have fallen. Tfli# Austrian and Magyar flags fly over tat citadel. The castle of the Serbian flaunts the Gorman and Austrian cofeifc They have torn down the Serbian flag as King Peter's men tore down the An* trian flag in December last when the list Austrian rowed himself across to Sea* lin.