THE MILITANT Page aturday, April 5, 1930 Trench Episodes 1936 Short Story By Bertram Chambers The necessity of wis diver like armor is made plain by the bodies beyond the crater. There, lying in grotesque, pain distorted huddles are the men whose armor is punctured and torn. Men who gaze skyward with glaring, pain distended eyes; victims of the greyish haze and its invisible groping fingers.
WO HUNDRED feet down in concrete dug outs sec, BOVE the eastern horizon the sun shines dully: a. copper disc suspended in a thin grey haze. mist tuat envelopes everything to a height of thirty or more feet.
An inter city road breaks the desolation of the countryside. It glistens in the haze, its wide asphalt surface damp with a liquid other than rain or man spilled water. Every hundred feet or so its continuity is broken by shell craters; occasionally a titanic crater obliterates its entire width and some hundreds of feet of length the unforgettable brand of a 5, 000 pound demolition bomb.
From either side trenches rise out of the haze to meet in one of the colossal craters; the scene of a direct hit by a demo. In the mist filled hole, fifty feet deep, a small gang of engineers are working laboriously on a runway in an attempt to link together the Bevered trench. They toil slowly, painfully, like divers on an ocean bed. One straightens up, looks at hig mate through the goggles of his mask and says: Those bloody Germans knew few things about war, but ll bet my bloody We tthey never dreamed of one like this!
His mate laughs ghoulishly in the grotesque mask that envelopes his head and face. The Jerries were muckers, but they ad some ideer of plying the bleedin The other shakes his head in an attempt to dislodge the sweat that is fogging his eyes. The sweat he daren open his mask to reach. Silently they bend their backs again.
On the lip of the crater where it faces the center of the road a soldier stands, staring steadily into the fixed eyepiece of a periscope. On the top the revolving eye swings slowly back and forth, sending invisible ultraviolet rays through the gas haze to the enemy lines.
There, too, an ultra periscope gropes with unseen rays.
queer creature of rubber and leather; of metal and glass is this modern soldier; a fantastic statue in the coppery dawn. Not one particle of his flesh is exposed to the air. leather uniform treated to withstand corrosive poison gas cloaks him from feet to head. It is air, gas and vapor tight. mask, wierdiy strange in the mist, covers his face. strip of tough, unbreakable glass enables him to survey a ghastly world.
Below the glass a flexible metal pipe runs from the mask to a fiat metal box strapped to his shoulders his oxygen alr apparatus, Strangest of all is the device that erv. bles him to speak audibly, a stubby metal tube protecting from the mask like a pig nose. stirring along the lines. Expectancy. whistle.
They climb over the top clumsily; retarded by the all enveloping gas proof uniform. They disappear onto the gas haze in a ragged line.
The surprise attack fails. titanic monster of metal rushes out of the fog, stands clear for an instant, vanishes. The enemy has launched a surprise attack with land battleships. The line stumbles on in quick decimation.
The speeding tanks, making their way across the broken ground at a thirty mile clip, throw terror into the line of recruits. They loom out of the gas haze with devastating suddenness; their ultra modern machine guns. cooled by liquid air. spitting a solid wall of lead at a speed of 5, 000 rounds per minute. recruit falters stands stock still in the slowing, vanishing line, then turns and runs, boy courage gone.
He passes an officer who, in one awful moment, sees his distended eyes in his ghost white face; hears him scream Mother! Mother! and stumbles on. The officer brings his gun up. mouthing: God, Oh God! The boy lurches horribly as the heavy service bullet drills through his back. He sags face down into the ground. Mother.
The word spews from his mouth in a torrent of blood.
The officer turns and runs forward to meet the tanks. Must not let them retreat. Advance. Advance. His mind is a riot, his guts a sickening cauldron. tank tooms up. He fires furtively at the metal belly as a yard wide tread grinds him, a pulp of fiesh and blood and bone, into the ground. recruit staggers, turns hall around. His face vanishes as a tank gunner gives him a burst at point blank range. He stands upright, swaying slightly, then goes down under the churning treads.
Another stands stih in sudden dizziness; his unsform is punctured. The sweetish taste of an acid gas is on his lips. Terror stricken he gropes with his fingers for the break. The dizziness increases. he falls, twisting convulsively to the ground. As the taste on his lips communicates to his tongue, he rolls slowly around in a last desperate attempt to discover the infinitesimal, deadly break. His tongue begins to swell in his mouth; his eyes to stare glassily as his convulsive movements slow up under sitfening muscles. And now his eyo.
are the swollen eyes of the prawn fish, pain distorted.
His clawing hands cease to obey the confusion of thoughts that swamp his searing brain. And now his tongue is no longer an organ of his body. It is a stick of wood, swelling to the full limits of his mouth. It spills over his teeth; Juts out between his distorted lips, dripping saliva. It commences to go down his throat. rigid, like a piece of wood. plece of wood.
In the gas haze the huge tanks grind into the ground the dead and the living.
remnants of the first contingents loll around polishing rifles; nicking the little crosses on the soft nosed bullets that converts them into dum dums; sleeping like logs with unspeakable weariness. gong strikes. once. twice. The signal that the armored gas proof doors are about to open. The soldier at the door reaches for valve; the Sss SSSof the antidotal gas fills the room. The gas that drenches the world above in a fog of death leaks in spite of all precautions in minute, but deadly quantities into the underground barracks. heavy door slides into a wall; a column of masked, gas proof uniformed replacements file in. The door slides home. The air becomes slightly close as the antidotal gas kills the poison gas adhering to the uniforms of the newcomers.
An officer barks an order. The line stands easy, then begins to strip off the protective uniforms.
An old hand, Veteran of the first world war, glances at the replacements. Hell! he exclaims disgustedly. bunch of bloody kids. Why in hell don they send us some men?
Can send us wot they aven got, matey, replies his buddy and lowers his haggard face to the rifle he is polishing.
The new recruits look around with boyish curlosity. Some look tough but the majority show sallow faces with downy hair where the older men show grizzly beards.
The officer in command looks fixedly at his new Cradle babies, not one bror eighteen, the majority far less he decides, and swears viciously under his breath. The cities of course are charnel houses under the incessant rains of gas bombs; these kids are the pick of the remnants left. He swears again, audibly.
gime. men.
ILING through a gas proof door a battalion takes their places in the tree. ch. They wait. Presently comes the signal that all stations are manned. Another wait; Services No Longer Required Tie Roman slave holder had his labor 66 the Negro; the native: the forcigner; the troubles. The slave uprising led by Spardeluded Republican workers says its the tacus in 70 proves that. The Southern Democratic administration; the Democratic plantation owner, master over many worker says its the Republican administranegro chattels, many centuries later had ed waste millions in degenerate orgies. Capitalism, greedily demanding more labor troubles also. The Fugitive Slave tion, For this class of leeches useful employment and more profits, puts faster machines into The medieval Act bears, proof of this.
None of these are true. The youth, the is a terrible nightmare. Then there is the the shops which produce goods and profits baron, lord over many serfs, also had his unemployment of the wage slave a terrible at a faster and faster rate. More workers women, the Negro, the foreigner, the le labor troubles. Wat Tyler Rebellion, nightmare that haunts the mind of the are thrown on the streets.
publican and Democrat all suffer from unthe Peasant Wars in Germany, testify how employment. While one group blames anworker. As he sees the job line lengthen, What of the worker thrown out of work?
bloody these labor troubles became. Tohowever worn out and sped up he may be, other, the boss has a hearty laugh as he sees the divided and thereby poweriess day pick up of any capitalist newspaper Some of our suave, moral uplifters he will manage an extra burst of energy so will show the modern capitalist and his that he may not be the next one told that may take a look at this: during periods of workers quarreling among themselves.
labor troubles.
his services are no longer required.
unemployment, there is an increase of pros The socialists have no cure for unemThere is one essential difference beThere are many millions of this type titution, murders and suicides. Our clergy ployment as socialist governments have men of every denomination rail at the mortween the labor troubles of chattel slavery, whose services are no longer required.
proven in Europe: witness England, Gerof feudalism and wage slavery or capitaials of the people and point at the mounting He goes from shop to shop offering his lamany, etc.
crime wave, but of course do not dare to ism. Today the slave struggles for a bor power, but the market is glutted with Only by overthrowing the system of examine the economic cause or the capital capitalism will unemployment be done away chance to work, for employment. Then this material. As he walks he begins to the slave would revolt to flee from emist system.
think, dangerous sign for the capitalists.
with. The society of Communism alone can ployment. Today, police are called to club Perchance a Red. an agitator. may During periods of unemployment, dis eliminate the terror of unemployment. Capune nployed into starving idleness; then ease and death rate increase.
give him some literature and he discovers: Among italism will be replaced by employment and soldiers were called to keep the slaves at Capitalism uses a new and much more workers these are always high, but during plenty for all. To help bring this about all work. Then, stri. gent laws providing for efficient method than the cat o nine tails hard times they rise to terrible levels. workers should Join the Communist League terrible punishments like crucifixion, hangFed on adulterated foods, shoddy clothed, to make the workers slave. That is hunger, of America (Opposition) and help ght for ing, quartéting, mutilating and flogging We are told that we are free and the bosses poorly housed, the workers become more the overthrow of capitalism and the estabwere meted out to any slave or serf fleeing are free. He is free to offer us terms of vulnerable than ever to disease.
lishment of Communism. CURTISS his work. Now terrible punishments like fall any kind we are free to starve unless we Child labor increases as children are terms and police beatings are handed out accept these terms.
forced to leave school and provide for the MISERY WAGES FOR BAG WORKERS to any worker having the audacity to deAs we work, we create profits, such family. While old workers leave the facmond work.
CHAP. LESTON, Ten hours a day in a huge profits that even in their wildest extory at one door, their own children enter In a few words, and this Illustrates the dust filled factory nets to a week for travagances the bosses cannot spend them.
at another at lower wages. We have the superiority of the capitalist mode of procase at present of unemployment generally 400 to 500 negroes at the Charleston BagSo thore proves to be no more market for duction for the master class over any that commodity are hired to produce; ging Co. Most of them are children. When and child labor specifically mounting at other: formerly the master sought the the same time.
they leave the factory at night, their hair, no more profits can be gotten so the free boss slave, now the slave seeks the master. He During periods of unemployment the eyelashes, and faces are covered with the lays off the free worker to freely starve in stands in line, he spits in his own face by the midst of a land of full warehouses wages of those at work are slashed by the brown dust of the mill.
offering to work for less food than his felwhich the worker Alled.
boss. The answer to any resistance is: low worker; occasionally now he demon there are plenty outside who want your WASHINGTON Man hour productivity strates and then the papers scream. Once in a Over Production Yet Poverty for Masses Job.
in all important manufacturing industries great while he revolts all for chance to The workers starve because they have These are but a few of the effects of showed notable increases from 1914 to 1927, slave.
grown too much, they wear rags because unemployment upon the workers. Every ranging from 24 to 82 for Industries.
Services No Longer Required they wove too much; they live in hovels be worker must ask himself: What is to blame? For the auto industry the increase was Essentially there are two sorts of un Cause they erected too many homes; they Communista Have Unemployment Solution 178. and for the rubber tire Industry it freeze because they have mined too much The skilled worker says: the machine; employnient, the unemployment of the blue was 292. according to the Bureau of blonde ihe narasites, who while unemploy coal. This is the paradox of capitalism. the adult: the youth; men: women; white: Labor Statistics.