It was introduced by the Germans and later adopted by the French. The
inflammable liquid was carried in tanks on the backs of soldiers and
the flames were expelled through a nozzle at the end of a short hose.]
As a rule the experience of one “caught in his own trap” is regarded
with a good deal of satisfaction by human nature in general. The
spectacle of anyone “hoist with his own petard” seems quite in the line
of poetic justice, and there is not much sympathy with the victim. But
there are instances when the merited recoil punishment is too ghastly,
too appalling to permit of any other sensation than that of horror, and
a French correspondent on the Somme has recorded such an instance. One
detachment of the French line was under heavy and concentrated fire,
and the commanding officer thought it advisable to withdraw the men to
a better position, about fifty yards in the rear. The correspondent
quotes the statement of the soldier left behind to watch and signal
the movements of the enemy. He says:
“I fixed myself about fifteen feet up in the crotch of a big tree and
seized a telephone which was connected with the nearest battery. From
there I could see a German trench at the edge of a little wood, about
eighty yards from the trench my comrades had vacated.
“For nearly an hour nothing happened. Occasionally I noticed heads
peering from the Boche trench, trying to see into the empty trench
which was hidden from them by a slight rise of the ground just before
it. They would have been a splendid mark for a sniper, but I had other
work this time. Suddenly a group of about forty Boches crept from the
wood, rapidly followed by the best part of a company. I telephoned:
‘Enemy advancing led by a detachment of flamenwerfer,’ for I had
recognized the devilish apparatus carried by the foremost group. When
the latter were about eighty feet from the empty trench, they halted
in a hollow just below the rise of ground, and then, with appalling
suddenness, a dozen jets of white and yellow flames darted up to fall
plumb into the trench. The dense smoke hid the Germans from me for a
time, but, thanks to my mask, I was able to gasp information to the
battery.
“A few moments later I had a glimpse of what hell must be like. Our
gunners had the range to an inch, and a torrent of shells burst right
among the flame-throwers, exploding the containers. Great sheets of
flame shot up, one jet from a container just grazing me, burning
my clothes so that my ribs were scorched rather badly. But it was
impossible to escape. The ground was a sea of fire. In the midst of it
the Germans, like living torches, were dying horribly. One man spun
round like a top, not even trying to run away, until he fell in a pool
of flame. Others rolled on the ground, but the blazing liquid ran over
them everywhere, and I could smell the sickening odor of burning flesh.
“I don’t think any of the fire-throwers escaped. Their screams, heard
despite the cannonade and rifle fire, seemed to continue terribly long.
The company behind them was panic-stricken. As the smoke lifted, I
saw them moving back to the wood, and our _mitrailleuse_ did severe
execution, spreading added slaughter over that scene of horror.
“I was nearly fainting with the fumes and the pain of my burns. The
Captain sent a patrol, which found me hanging limply in the tree fork.
They had trouble getting me, but luckily the Germans were too staggered
to interfere.”