Few realize that there were troops of the Mongolian race on the battlefields of Europe. Here is a column of Japanese soldiers from French Cochin-China marching to their camp at Versailles Belgian native troops (Askaris) operating in German East Africa are recruited from the various Congo tribes water," said Mucke, "we had to go sparingly; each man received three glasses daily. When it rained all possible receptacles were placed and the main sail was spread over the cabin roof to catch the rain. The whole crew went about naked in order to spare our clothing which was already in rags. Toothbrushes were long ago out of sight. One razor made the rounds of the crew. The entire ship had one precious comb." The authorities at Padang though neutral were not overfriendly. At first they wanted to intern the Ayesha for the period of the war, but Mucke insisted on his right to supplies needful to take him to the next neutral port, and a period of sanctuary in which to refit. He declared the Ayesha a warship and pointed to his four machine guns to prove it. The authorities were oversqueamish as to the amount of supplies that might be taken. They refused clothes or even toothbrushes on the ground that to permit them to be taken would be a breach of neutrality. Accordingly after twenty-four hours the raiders put out to sea little better accoutred than when they entered the port. They had been out only 24 hours when they encountered a German freighter, the Choising. 66 Great was our joy now," said Mucke later. "I had all my men come on deck and line up for review. The fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus in nature's garb we gave three cheers for the German flag on the Choising. The men on the Choising told us afterwards, "We couldn't make out what that meant, those stark naked fellows all cheering. Mucke thereupon took over the Choising, sinking the Ayesha, which had borne them through so many perils. He turned his new ship's prow toward Aden and the Red Sea, believing that in this way he could get into Arabia and thence to Turkey and home. On the voyage he had innumerable narrow escapes from detection by Allied cruisers, but finally made his way to land at Hodeida, a small Arabian port north of Aden. Here he made friends with the Arabs and with officials of the Turkish government, who welcomed him and his men. On the Kaiser's birthday the Germans paraded together with the Turkish troops and international rejoicings were held. But this was by no means the goal of the German force. They hesitated long whether to make their way northward over the burning sands of the Arabian desert, or to put to sea in lighter craft than their steamer and evade detection by making their way through waters close to the coast. They finally determined upon the latter course and on March 14, 1915, two months after landing at Hodeida, they put to sea again in two large sambuks. Three days later one of the boats, holding twenty-eight men, capsized. The water was full of sharks and of reefs. The men were afraid of the former and as they climbed on the bottom of the upturned boat it pounded on the latter so that it bade fair to go to pieces. To add to their perplexities a band of Arabs appeared upon the shore and for a moment the men doubted whether they were friends or foes. They proved to be friends and the day following, after all the Germans had safely been brought ashore, they rendered signal aid in diving for the lost property. These men of the desert, curiously enough, were men of the sea as well, and they dived so skilfully that they even brought up between four of them the machine guns which had gone to the bottom. Mucke had now but one boat and for a time it looked as though he must take to the hard pathway through the desert. Luckily a sub-official of the Turkish government turned up after a time and succeeded in getting a boat of fiftyfour tons. With this the adventurers sailed north for three days to Lith. Here they heard that the British had word of their presence in the Red Sea and had sent three cruisers to intercept them. Accordingly they left the sea and took to the desert. Across burning sands, and more than once in peril from hostile tribesmen, Mucke and his fellows trudged on northward by easy marches until they reached Damascus. All was for them bright and cheerful after their prolonged hardships. At every town they were greeted and feasted by partisans of the Kaiser. The further north they went the more enthusiastic the greeting. At Haidar-Pasha, the last point on the Asiatic soil, they were warmly greeted by representatives of the Turkish and German governments and military and naval forces. In the forefront of the welcomers stood Admiral Souchon of the German navy. To him advanced Lieutenant von Mucke, followed by his forty-nine men now in fresh trim sailor's uniforms. He lowered his sword to the Admiral. "Beg to report most obediently, Herr Admiral, landing corps of the Emden forty-four men, four officers, one surgeon." That was all! A mere report as though it was all in the day's business! French Colonial troops from Indo-China preparing a meal. Note they are wearing steel helmets A British drive against a town occupied by the Germans on the western front. Heavy artillery fire has been directed against the German lines for days and shells are seen breaking well ahead of the advancing waves CHAPTER VII AGAIN THE WEST-THE FRENCH OFFENSIVE IN CHAMPAGNE-THE BRITISH OPERATIONS ABOUT LOOS AND LENS-THE HISTORIC BATTLE OF VERDUN- -NATURE OF THE FORTRESS-BOASTS OF THE GERMANS "THEY SHALL NOT PASS"-THE ROAD TO VERDUN-FRENCH VICTORY-HEAVY LOSSES OF GERMANS-BATTLE OF THE AT PERONNE-THE BRITISH TANKS-BATTLE OF ARRAS SOMME-FIGHTING ET us turn again to the war in the west; to those trench-scarred and shellpitted fields and forests of France where the struggle began, where it was most fiercely waged, and where, at least up to the early months of 1918, the combatants were so closely matched that the shift of a few hundred yards in position was celebrated as a notable victory or defeat. In telling the story of the operations in this section we are virtually restricted to descriptions of the striking or picturesque features of a series of battles which at the end of months and even years had resulted merely in a continuous deadlock. The enemies facing each other in the trenches of France had spent months of futile watching and sniping, with occasional volcanic outbursts of artillery or sudden raids from one side or the other. The principal fighting in that summer of 1915 was in the East, and the Russians and Italians were giving the Austrians so serious a time that the Kaiser felt the need of turning all his force and energy to his Ally's aid. So things lagged in the West until Sir John French and General Joffre determined that it was time to stir up the sleeping dogs in the boche trenches and make the Kaiser recall some of his fighting men from the East. Accordingly offensives were begun simultaneously by the French in Champagne and the British about Loos and Lens. These operations present a state of affairs not uncommon in this war. In them were engaged more than half a million men on each side. The losses were reckoned by the hundreds of thousands. The gains both of British and French were considerable-a true contribution to the work of slowly driving the invaders out of France. But neither offensive was completely successful. It neither destroyed the German army, nor did it pierce the German lines, though undoubtedly it pushed the foe back very materially. As a result these operations have been overshadowed by others taking place synchronously, and particularly by the Battle of Verdun which began shortly after the Allied offensive had spent its strength. Eye-witnesses declare that there was never a scene so fit to set man's pulses leaping as that on September 25, 1915, when along a fifteen mile front Castlenau's poilus in the Champagne district, singing and praying, laughing and swearing, shouting the Marseillaise or the Camagnole went over the top. It was a magnificent charge and at once the Germans were pushed out of their first rank of trenches. What the strength of these positions was may be indicated by a description written to the London Times by one of the conquerors: One striking sign of their confidence was the number and size of the underground refuges, more than 20 feet deep, which they had laboriously carved out of the solid chalk all along the line. In one small sector there were 150 of them, strongly buttressed with stout timber props, and fitted with double rows of berths for a large number of men. This solidity is typical of the whole scheme of the defenses. In that twenty miles of front there are hundreds and hundreds of miles of trenches and light railways. The line is so irregular, and so broken up by salients, big and little, that alwell as by direct frontal fire." most everywhere it could be defended by lateral as Powerful as the position had been it was carried by the assailants who pushed on with cheers beyond the trenches to the German field guns in the rear. in the rear. Whole batteries were taken, and in many instances turned on the |