"Don't fret over me. I have five wounds, but I am a lucky chap to be
here to tell the tale, for if the shell which hit me in the chest
had exploded a bit lower I should have been killed outright. Our
ambulance men tried to get us away, but the Germans fired upon them,
so they had to leave us to take our chances. It rained in torrents
all that night and the Germans put sentries with bayonets over us.
They took all our food and water away, and on Tuesday afternoon
some of them tried to make out that we had been firing upon them. We
asked how that was possible when they had taken everything from us,
but they were going to shoot us when an officer came up and stopped
them.
"On Wednesday they removed us to the far side of a haystack out of
their line of fire so we could not get hit, but one of the British
shells exploded near us, and of course I got hit. We thought it best
to make a dash for it. I could not walk and had to crawl on my hands
and knees with my wounds bleeding, and while I was crawling away
they started to fire on us. There were six of us who started but
only two of us finished. Our trenches were only a mile and a half
away, but it took us four hours and a half to crawl there."
THE NEW WAR WEAPON.
A French doctor, who has just returned from Flanders, describing the
effect of the "Fleche d'aero," as the steel darts with which the
French airmen are supplied are generally called, said:
"Among the 2,000 wounded whom we treated in forty-eight hours was a
German who had been struck by an aeroplane dart. He was evidently
bending over when hit, for the dart had entered the right thigh and
traversed the whole leg, so that the point emerged just above the
boot. The man was conscious when he was brought in, and said he felt
no pain, only a heavy blow. He died soon afterward from shock and
loss of blood."
The darts resemble steel pencils. They are about five inches long
with the unpointed end half-fluted to insure their falling head
first. It is calculated that they strike with a hundred pounds force
if thrown from an elevation of 1,000 metres.
CENSORING THE CENSOR.
As threats and entreaties have proved equally vain against
censorship the Paris _Temps_ attacks it with ridicule. Pierre
Mille, one of the best known contributors, writes a column article,
beginning:
"Regarding the origin of the convulsion which is shaking Europe,
together with the least known diplomatic secrets and the most
concealed strategic projects, I am going to make some most important
revelations."
Before he can reveal anything here, however, the censor intervenes
with a four-line cut. He continues:
"It will be remembered that Napoleon once cried before the
Pyramids----" (Here is another slash.)
The writer goes on:
"But we do not need the support of history or the remembrance of
the victories won by Jeanne d'Arc at (name excised) or at Valmy by
(another obliteration). One fact I will add----" (Here follows a
ten-line cut.)
He continues:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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