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Wednesday, November 12, 2014
"Things Seen
"Awful Tales Told
by Men at the
Front"
Excerpted from The Lucknow
Sentinel, November 19, 1914
Pen Pictures of Scenes Now Being
Enacted at the Seat of War
He was a Scots Guardsman,
though his accent was pure Lanca-
shire, and he was wounded in the
hand last Monday on the Aisne. I
found him in a French hospital and
he was glad to have someone to
whom he could talk in English, writes
the Paris correspondent of the Lon-
don Daily Mail. At first I thought it
was to talk about his wound that he
wanted, for the ordinary private,
plunged suddenly and simultane-
ously as he has been not only in the
terrible novelty of war, but also into
the entirely unimagined and unex-
pected surroundings of a foreign
country, is so bewildered by the
flood of new impressions that has
swept in upon his mind that he can
usually give a clear account of only
one of them, and that the one that
has been emphasized and impressed
upon him by sharp physical pain -
the story of how he got is wound.
But this man had something else
engraved upon his brain that he
wanted to share by way of speech
with someone who could under-
stand him; it was as if the horror of it
was too great for him to keep to him-
self, and I do not think it was imagi-
nation that made me think I saw a
look of relief in his eyes, as he fin-
ished telling me the story The vision
that obsessed him had been the inci-
dent of a second time, but, as he told
me in his rough speech, the remem-
brance of it will be with him through-
out all the life that lies before him.
The cause of it all had been one of
those huge 90 -pound lyddite shells
that the German artillery has been
using with such terrible effect, espe-
cially in this Battle of the Mame.
Battle of the Mame
They tear a hole in the ground "that
you could bury a horse in," and they
number their victims, when they fall
near troops in anything like close for-
mation, not by units but in tens.
"There were four of them Zouave
chap just ahead of us;" said this Scots
Guardsman from Lancashire, "an'
Valerie Gillies/Lucknow Sentinel
The Lucknow Brownies, Guides and
Pathfinders placed the crosses bearing
the names of Lucknow area war
veterans at the Cenotaph under the
guidance of Doug Adamson, Poppy
Chairman of Lucknow Legion Branch
309 on November 6, 2014.
From left: Guide leader Lori Blake, Guide
Bella Rothaier, Guide Mikayla Havens,
Brownie Marah Gibbons, Brownie Riley
Robinson, Brownie Sorja Spears, Guide
Sam Hallam, Pathfinder Sydney Hunter,
Brownie Leader Sarah Martin, Absent;
Brownie Leader Margaret Martin.
in Battles"
one o' them shells just coom along
an' exploded where they were. An', by
goom, it just lifted the all four oop
into th' air, it did. A saw them go oop,
and A put me 'and over me eyes.
They went oop all in pieces, legs and
heads and arms flyin,' except one, an'
he looked like a doll with 'is legs an'
arms straight out an' his fingers
clawin' and the wind of it blowin' out
'is trousers. Some of our chaps
laughed, it looked that odd like, but A
couldn't face it. A just covered me
eyes. A saw them go oop, but A
couldn't look at them coom down."
Nights in the water -soaked
trenches, the deadly cold dawn, when
the wearied, half -waked troops must
stand to arms, for that is the hour
which the enemy often chooses for a
surprise attack, the hunger that a cup
of half -cold tea, a hard biscuit, and a
piece of uncooked bacon can do little
to appease - the remembrance of
these had faded from his recollection
beside the vivid memory of that
instantaneous destruction and the
dismemberment of men who he had
seen living and moving close in front
of him an instant before.
And in the next bed was another
who had, too, one paramount
impression that he had brought
more clearly than any other out of
the inferno from both had come. It
was the strange sight of a British
Maxim gun deliberately sawing a
wall of bricks in half. At short range
the gun had opened upon a party of
Germans who rushed for cover
behind the only obstacle at hand, an
Ordinary Red -brick Wall.
An Ordinary Red -brick Wall
They had no doubt thought they
were safe, but the English machine -
gunners had another device in
reserve for their destruction. They
deliberately opened fire on the wall
itself, raising and depressing the
muzzle of their gun in the same line
until the hail of bullets had smashed
a hole right through it. Then they
began to move the gun sideways to
and fro along the wall until they had
cut through it in that direction, too.
And then the wall fell down and the
Germans behind it had to run back-
wards to escape the falling bricks. As
they went the pitiless Maxim mowed
them down, devouring the prey
which it had eaten its way through
the solid bricks and mortar to win.
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