THOUSANDS OF GUNS.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 May 1916, Page 8

THOUSANDS OF GUNS.

ARTILLERY CONCENTRATED. FIGHTING IN THE OPEN. "The great characteristic of everything we saw around Verdun was guns, guns, gnus." So writes the correspondent of the Niewe Rotterdamsche Courant, who, with a party of other neutral journalists, recently paid a visit specially arranged by the German Government to the scene of the recent fighting. This correspondent's message is a revelation of the immensity of the artillery concentration by the Germans against Verdun. He himself has visited both the Western and Eastern fronts several times previously, but says he has never seen anything approaching the present accumulation of guns around Verdun, and he even compares the artillery concentration on the Dunajec, when the Russian front was broken last year, as a child's game." The following are passages from his messages: "Over the roads leading towards Verdun the artillery and ammunition were brought up in such quantities as the history of war has never seen on such a limited area. There was one part of the front north-west of Verdun which ! could never have been crossed by the I German troops without a completely de- [ structive preparation by artillery. Heavy howitzer shells had made a series of holes over the whole area, never more than 'a few yards apart. /The . bushes on the slopes had been torn away, trees struck down, and the whole slope ploughed up. Nevertheless, even here the French made a stubborn resistance. There was a little wood about the defence of which the German soldiers had heard so much that it was not without a little fear they entered upon the storm-attack. But what did they find? What had before been an impregnable net of wire entanglements had been blown to pieces by the shells and shot." Describing his impression before leaving the scene on the front, the writer says: "Everywhere around us they were firing, and the country seemed covered by an incredible number of guns. At this moment there was, as a matter of fact, very little firing by the different iiaiteries, but on account of their numbers they made an unceasing thunder. We have got so accustomed,to tlis hidden character of this war so far that we could hardly believe our eyes at what we saw around Verdun. Long rows of guns, as in the old battle pictures, set up !" t' ie °P en fieWs, with artillerists standing about them. On the hilltops observation posts, with their great telescopes'uncovered. That for us whose eyes had become accustomed to'something quite different in this war, was the most bizarre of everything in 1 this remarkable neighbourhood. When I shut my eyes I still see before me those curved lines of row upon row of -miis with the artillerists moving about them in the open battlefield. The great characteristic of everything wc saw !ibo\it Verdun was guns, guns, guns!"