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Updated: May 21, 2025
At a few minutes before six o'clock Len Spencer began to arrange one of the street windows of the "Blade" office. First of all, from hooks, he suspended Dodge and Bayliss' "ghosts" of the night before. "What does that mean?" asked the wondering onlookers. Then an unexploded bomb bearing the trademark of the Sploderite Company was put in the window.
He showed it to his friend Hooker, made careful provision for its publication in the event of his sudden death, then stored it away in his desk and went ahead with the gathering of more data. This was the unexploded powder-mine to which I have just referred.
I sent my officer to reconnoitre, who found a gaping crowd standing round what they thought was a large fish lashing his tail, but what in reality was an unexploded torpedo with the screw still in motion.
Here and there could be seen the colored Bengal lights, fantastically illuminating groups of merry people. The small boys were making use of their torches to search for unexploded firecrackers in the grass, or, in fact, for anything else that might be of use to them. But the music was the signal and all abandoned the lawn for the theatre. The large platform was splendidly illuminated.
So we came to Neuville St.-Vaast, a large village once with a fine church, old in history, a schoolhouse, a town hall, many little streets of comfortable houses under the shelter of the friendly old hill of Vimy, and within easy walk of Arras; then a frightful rubbish heap mingled with unexploded shells, the twisted iron of babies' perambulators, bits of dead bodies, and shattered farm-carts.
Now, I have issued orders enough about permitting these unexploded shells to lie about, and I purpose holding the Colonels responsible for all damage. Suppose that explosion was heard at corps head-quarters, as it doubtless was, and the inquiry is made from what quarter the rebels threw the shell, what reply am I, as the commanding General of this division, to make?
I saw a green, downy countryside, beautiful in its summer life, ravaged by gun-fire so that the white chalk of its subsoil was flung above the earth and grass in a wide, sterile stretch of desolation pitted with shell-craters, ditched by deep trenches, whose walls were hideously upheaved by explosive fire, and littered yard after yard, mile after mile, with broken wire, rifles, bombs, unexploded shells, rags of uniform, dead bodies, or bits of bodies, and all the filth of battle.
Dazed though he still was, he nerved himself for action. And so, pressing onward through the livid glare, through the night shattered by stupendous detonations, he drew his revolver and broke into a run. Strange evidences of the battle now became evident. He saw an unexploded grenade lying beside a wounded man who grasped at him and moaned with pain.
Then, when such unexploded shells as were lying around loose had been cautiously carried away, the King, his brother, Prince Frederick Charles Alexander, the chief-of-staff, General von Moltke, the Minister of War, General von Roon, and Count von Bismarck assembled on the highest point, and I being asked to join the group, was there presented to General von Moltke.
I would rather have touched a sleeping tiger than that conical piece of metal with its unexploded possibilities, but bent low to see the inscriptions on it, scratched by French gunners with wore recklessness of death. Mort aux Boches was scrawled upon it between the men's initials.
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