IN GREVILLERS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 120, 21 May 1917, Page 7

IN GREVILLERS.

SECOND STAGE OF ADVANCE. ff____- AU-TRAXIANS ARE FIGHTING. COOTRY OF INTENSE INTEREST. (Australian War Correspondent. C. E. \V. BEANO (Copyright.—Reserved by the Crown.l British Headquarters. France, March 16. Three days a_v> the German forces opposing the Australian and British iine upon the Somme battlefield again withdrew. I'his makes the second stage in the German retirement. It seems to have been earned out earlier than was intended. I: so, this was -because the heavy artillery fire on the south side of Lcnpart Wood, where the Australians had pressed up to within a few hundred yards of the main German position, made the German certain that an attack on his flank there was imminent. And if that attack were made, and succeeded. it would have placed this portion oi his force in a position nothing short of perilous. He 'withdrew from this line at dask on March L_ Within three Hours after he left them Victorian troops were in Ins trenches below Grevillers. And during the day before yesterday their posts" were pushed out beyond the Tillage of Grevillers itself. Yesterday three of us took the moot interesting walk. I think, that I have ever taken in ny life. During the eariy and appalling tenths oi the aornme winter you had to drag through three or four miles of continuous, deep, glutinous mud to reach the trout line. Battalions going in and coming out arrived at the end of their iorrmey in a staLe of weariness such as I have" never seen on men before. But after a few weeks oi this, narrow wooden paths made ot" planks similar to those of a gangway, and known as duck boards, began to be '.aid over the mud. and by Christmas time these had spread ail over the district like arteries. Tens oi miles oi them. We drove to the duikboard walk at "Swansea Circus,"

where in the winter Australian poiicercen used to direct the traffic under German she'Jhre. and went along it to a certam gullyside of evil reputation not far from tie rained Tillage of Flers— known as Factory Corner. Factory Corner was some old agricultural factory in the bottom of a country gully. It was a heap of bricks and rusty iron when the New Zealanders took it in tecaber Ail through the winter the Germans shelled this corner until tnere _ as no unshelled yard of ground on any c--_ ot IT. It was aimost as heavily shelied as the ground behind their own tmes.

GE-DECTTCRT. Fro_ Factory Corner we struck right across the valley to Geudecourt. - c wanted to sec Geudecourt because for some rea_.m the Germans shelled the remains oi it heavily during the whole ■winter. It was easily the most freoaentiy shelled place in our lines during the winter. When we came into the feomme acain in October; Le Sara and Flers tad the reputation of being most Wealthy corners. But to anyone who knew Poaeres they were child's play. There are quite respectable ruins left in each oi them after sis months' sheilmg. There was nothing leu oi" Po_eres after cne month. But Guedeconrt was different. ifie Getnan rarely left the t>la*.-e alone mgnt or "day tor a single hour. That was why _p wished to see it. It is the only place ■which I ha.ye seen that looks in any desree like Pozjeres as we knew it. There is "one stumo of a wall, or perhaps two. There is a.' mound of sne brick dust which once was a church. The rest is the short stumps of trees and wilderness of black hollows filled with the pounded grey debris of shattered roofoeams. There is more of it left than there was of Poz;eres —but it would not be worth arguing about, anyway. They were even fhellm_: one end of the place still. V>by they so shelled Guedecourt is a mystery. and always will be.

THE GEEiL__ LPCES. Frcm there "we -walked down to the rtranse steep banked sunken road known to us" as " Fritz's Folly '"—which I o-nce described tinder the name of the " Green Bank." It was a meetinjr-plaee of two of his front-line trenches—tire trench and Vayonet trench.—behind a steep road cutt:ng through the foot of the hill. The British, arid afterwards the Australians, several tiroes attacked this knotty point. each time in high hopes. But the jomme Enid beat theni The Germans saw them cox_:n_r. and the brave wares only just lapped over into his position m a few isolated driblets easily wjped out. In tJie end. at a tirrse -_hen it was easier to lose your way than nnd it in this wilderness of Soemne mud. a messenger with some of our arrangements for as-•a-tilt. missed ins turning, and wandered aito the German lmes: and aiKrut the same tine a German with some of their eonrrt-erpiins missed his tuminjrs and Pandered into ours—and the Germans evactrtec the place and we took it without failimr into the trap they had laid.

That will show what sort of a battlefield these Australians were brav-.n_- during tie winter.

«c followed aions the bayonet trench. Otir people had J list been aide to start Otnyuig the men who lay there by the German wire, and in No Man's Land — lay very close to the trench. The < lermans had not even troubled to bury their own dead, -who lay behind their trench—not ;.-> front of it—they -corned to have pitched them out over the parapet without tron-bling their head,, further. There they lay among the broken bottles and o_d tins whi.-h'marked the pound at the rear of this trench alone ts whole length. The Hermans bring "vneral waters into the trenches with L.cm. and th° parados of this trerv-h as it wandered across the nmd-flatri was

by an endless ribbon of these bottles thrown oat of the trench.

And they irere mud-flats with a v-n F_nee. Our artillery would cover every fnnaTe inch of them daring the winter with shell. Beyond them, where they * 0 ""ptly ended in a steep chalk bank. ■-' t.n- 'Jerman second line trench — - '"' '—"en—moderately burn and dry on . l >• bank top. But the stretch of flats" '. " w was «njr>ly a maze of -waterlogged crat€re ' Hire °r there -were the -tubers oI ** o'd German pun position .'own m. the beams* sticking up like __)CT_ned pins. We picked onr w aT around the edge of deep mud'°«s to Lusienhof farm—that is to say I °nnda_o_ oi it and a recognisable

J hedge. It was a small German head- | quarters, the working rooms, of course, j being dugouts deep below ; and the farm ' foundations were heaped with ungainly j lumps of earth dug out from the interior. The Germans blew a bio- crater jin the road here in the scare alter the ! Briti-h tank attack, but the mine was 1 not well sited, and the huge crater was by the roadside. From Lusienhof we I took the road across the flats to the villages tak-en by the Australians in rebruary-Ligny Le Barque and Thillov

THE GREEK GRASS AGAIN". As we walked this road towards Ligny across the fiat and neared the opposite slope, we drew quite suddeolv clear ot the tiltli which covers seven or eight miles of battlefield more or less and out into a .-Hallow ,-halk cutting through almost green fields. Exactly iourteen hundred*, yards auav on our right, in full view, was the first main t.erman trench, still held by them. You could see the rusty wire" l.ke brown gorse winding over tho hill and the chalk ]>ara;.ets behind it. At eleven hundred yards the cutting hid us from it. At our feet was another crater in the crossroad*, blown a lew week.- hack. By our side w._i a German notice -Road to Beaulenoourt—town major next the church." YV e had ju*t parsed it when tnere was a rushing through the sky. and great pieces of Ligny and Le Barque and i'hilloy seemed to lie thrown about our ears. For some reason the Cermaus suddenly flung heavy -hells into the place at the rate of about twenty in the minute—Sineh and 5.9 pounding" with a ■heart-satisfying bank into the heart of the village. We withdrew .lightly, as the communiques say. and watrhed the spectacle from a roadside, a- you would a show. When pieces of tree root iiad ceased to turn circles in the air we turned down the main street of Ligny towards Le Barque. j The houses are three-quarter shattered here, and they look out through ' a fairly skinny patch of wood. But there is enough both of houses and wood left to make the fighting of last fortnight something like village fighting; machine guns had fired from the houses on our right against Australians attacking throuo-h the trees. There were whole walls and roofs still it position. We struck across from a field where the Tasmanians had lain on their stomachs and bombed the Germans behind the road-bank yards away, and made along the lane where those Germans were killed as they fled: a double line of trees ransed up the hill across our path. A minute later we found ourselves uoon the Baoaume Road.

THE BAPAL'ME ROAD. It is a double row of trees running straight as a ruled line from one horizon to the other. Miles back it runs through Pozieres ami Albert. Then through 1.0 "-ars and past the Butte. And here v»e were on it about three kilometres from Bapaume. By the side of us wis the old 'ierman railway running down the road. A tittle behind us some last German train had been cut otf by shellrire—and there were The trucks lying at angles on the raiL-. trucks from Madgeburc and Essen. Across the road was a blown up culvert and further a second mine crater We walked uphill until we looked down a long straight vista, near the end of whk-b the i l-rman outposts and ourtmust have been faWng" one another across th o road: then we out straight across the grass to our left towards Grevillers.

It was green grass compared to any we had seen on the Somme field. And half of it was very big new shell holes, hut they were c'.ean-eut and fresh, and the carta was not a slime. As we walked a solitary German pun was

banging about twice a minute into a small scrub-patrh a few hundred yards to our right. Ido not know what they had found there, but they certainly thought they had found something. A cot pie of men hopped across the skyline quickly—the gun put four shells in within a few »eeonds as they skipped. An hour later, s - we passed the place the same gun was still peeking twice a minute at exactly the same tpot.

THE FRONT LIKE. \\ c crossed the excellent little trench dug by our troops the week before, and the great square mud trenches of the German main line protecting Louport wood. They were great, deep, square trenches, with dugouts, but no other woodwork or improvement, and half waterlogged. The bombs there showed that they had heen held for the few nishts of the retirement, but until then they had never been lived in—they were spare reserves, to be improved if occasion reauired it. The wire m front of Loupart" Wood cot.= : sted of two e.itangiements on stakes oefore the second trench, and live before ..be front trench. Two on stakes, one c-.: huge steel knife rests, a. fourth on stakes, and a fifth on knife rests, and they were still adding to it when they retired.

We walked "up a muddy lane into a grove behind Greviiiers—an oid quarry, lonir since srass-grown. with tall trees sprimrin_ from the depths. All round it like the boxes of a theatre. the ijeritians had built dugouts, and. having left them they had spent this afternoon in sheilinu them with very- big shells. It was the least broken village and the best woodland that we had seen. There were still unbroken, roofs and some whole rooms. German shells had that day been pounding into the deserted place. We moved up past the deserted ponds and into the country beyond, and hesitated at a corner where a ianc ran away into the fields. Vv c were not sure whether to turn up that ; anP we saw some men in another direction. Another rain was walking quickly round a hedge corner towards them." We stepped over there too. They were the men we had come to see.

They were the front line company. Five hundred and fifty yards down that quiet lane, which still had branches and t-.vig? enough in its hedges to suggest an English lane, was the mam German trench, still held by Germans. These outposts were living here, within shout o; it, something like their ordinary Australian

life. There had been a deal of sniping, the Germans were throwing high explosive, softly-falling, pineapple bo-robs all day—the "ngly little dry pits of the explosion were obvious all along the road. He had lathered the place with heavy shell m the midday. And they were" living at the cutting edge of it. going and coming on their message? quietly and promptly: sending their patrols regularly out through the unknown and back —one of a patrol had just been hit in the last half hou~. They knew they were doing their country's work, and* doing it outstandingly well. and. what pleased them more than anything is to think that away back home in Australia people -will be pleased and proud of them. They were Victorians and New South TVe'ishmen in that village. Dusk 'ivas falling as we left them. Within a few hours they were fighting the German in his trenches, and before dawn be came orrt at them, and "had been driven oft". That is all in the night's- work.