The Public Ledger

WHAT WAR IS LIKE
Soldier Describes Battle to His
Little Son.
Tells of Scenes in the Trenches and
of the Work of Artillery--All Very
Costly, Very Destructive and
Very
Useless.

London.--The following letter was
written by a British army officer in
France to his nine-year-old son, who
had asked his father what a real bat-
tle line was like:

"My Dear Brian--You would like to
know what a real battle line is like. In
the distance you see a hill and on the
right some woods.

Some farmhouses,
one or two still intact, and others
mere heaps of brick, lie dotted about.
Near you on the right is a battery
hidden under bushes and earthworks.
Nearer you still are dugouts in which
the men live underground.

"In the distance is a German an-
chored balloon watching the country.
On the right and overhead is an aero-
plane.

"Beyond the hill and the woods are
the trenches in which the infantry face
the German infantry, also in trenches.
Somewhere near the trenches, and
where they can see them well and the
country on the German side, are the
artillery observation officers, who tele-
phone directions to the batteries and
direct their fire where they want. All
this is done very accurately on a spe-
cial system called registration, by
which having once hit a target you
can always go on hitting it or anything
near it.

"For instance, yesterday when I was
directing the battery at one of these
places a German put up a tin on a pole
and waved it about in the air in his
trench. I saw this, told one gunner
what angle to lay at and the range, and
the next moment the shell arrived and
the tin went up in the air. What hap-
pened in the trench I don't know, but
the shell burst in it. One burst in ours
this morning and killed one man and
wounded two others. So they can dc
damage.

"The trenches are very lively places
at night when a lot of rifle fire is al-
ways going on, and one side or the
other sends out patrols or snipers to
peep over the other's trenches and
shoot men; and the trench mortars get
busy and send over high-explosive
bombs, or someone more daring than
others crawls out and throws hand
grenades into the trench.

"Behind these front trenches are
other trenches, which lead in a zig-zag
way to the front, or hold more men
ready to help if the front trench is at-
tacked. This is really the nastiest
place to be in, because the German ar-
tillery are always ready to shoot at
them, and do shoot at them when there
is any excitement.

"Hidden all along the trenches are
machine guns, which fire flank-wise
and are very destructive. Then come
the artillery, and behind them again
the big guns the very big ones which
drop shells a tremendous distance and
blow blocks of houses to bits. They
say one of ours not long ago dropped
a big shell into the middle of an in-
fantry regiment--a German one and
blew 500 of them into little bits. Dot-
ted about around the country where
they are most needed are the antiair-
craft guns, whose shooting at birds."
as they call the aeroplanes, is very
pretty--and very bad.

"Away back behind all these are the
aerodromes and captive balloons of
our own watching the front, where all
the roads are busy with motor trans-
ports feedings the firing line with grub
and ammunition. You would never
think how many men and how much
transport are necessary to do all this
properly.

"A battle starts with terrific artil-
lery bombardment, sometimes for days,
and when the enemy's trenches are ab-
solutely destroyed and their men dazed
with the rain of high explosives and
gas and bombs the infantry charge
across.

"Sometimes
the
machine
guns
haven't been knocked out and they
take a big toll of life, and always
there are plenty of men whom the
bombardment fails to knock out.

"There is never a soul to be seen.
There is only a terrible roar of guns
and explosions, and the perpetual
snapping of rifles and rattle of ma-
chine guns. There is a view of some
broken walls, trees without leaves or
branches, and trenches everywhere.

"You would think there was no life
anywhere if it were not for the row,
and yet one knows that if you put up
a head a thousand eyes will see it and
half a thousand fingers pull a trig-
ger.

"It is all very destructive, very cost-
ly and very useless, war, but it brings
out all that is best in men. No doubt
it is for a good purpose which we do
not realize at present, when we only
see the ruin and the killing and the
waste.

"Sometimes the world wants clean-
ing like the pistons of a motor to
make it run smoothly, and this is the
way it comes about. You boys later
on will reap the benefit of it all."