WAR ON EBRO.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 137, 13 June 1938, Page 10

WAR ON EBRO.

BOYS BECOME MEN. GERMAN GUNNING METHODS. MARKET GARDEN SKIRMISHES (By ERXEST IIEMIXGWAY.) EBRO DKLTA. The irrigation ditch was full of this year's crop of frogs. A.s you -plashed forward they scattered, jumping wildly. A line of boys lay behind a railroad track, each having dug liim-elf a little shelter in the gravel below the rails, and their bayonets pointed above the ,-hinv rails that would be ru-ty soon. (In all their faces was the varying look of men. boys become men in this one afternoon, who are awaiting combat. Across the river the enemy had jiif-t taken the bridge head and the la-t troops had swum across the river after the pontoon bridge was blown. Shellwere corning in now from the little town of Amposta across the river and registering aimlessly in the open eountrv ano alon;r the road. You would hear the double boom of guns and then the whirling, cloth-ripping, incoming rush and dirt would fountain brownly up among the grape vines. The war hud the pointless, nndangerou.s dumbness that it has when the guns first come into action before there is proper observation and the shooting is accurately controlled, and I walked down along the railway track to find a to wat -li what General Franco's men were doing aero--the river. Like Bank Clerks Flying Home. Sometimes in war there is. a dead'iness which makes all walking upright within a certain range either foolishness or bravado. Rut there are other times, before tliiii'js really -t;.it. who' it is like the old days when you walke 1 around in the bull ring just before the fight. Up the Tortosa Road "pi., liewere diving and machine-gunning. German 'plane* are absolutely methodieal. though. They do their jd> and if you are a part of their job you are out < I luck. If you are not included in their job you can go very close to them and watch them as you can watch lionfeeding. If their orders are to strafe the road on their way home, you will get it. Otherwise, when they are ."m----ished with their job on their parti-nlar objective, they go off like bank clerks flying home.

Up towards Torto=a tliiucrs looked qnite deadly already from the way the 'planes were acting. But down here on the delta the artillery were still only warming up like baseball pitchers lobbing them over in the bull pen. You crossed a stretch of road that in .mother day would be worth your life to sprint across and headed for a white hou-e that stood above a canal that paralleled the Ebro and dominate:! all the yellow town across the river where tile ]'asci<twere preparing their attack. The dooiwere all locked and you could not get up to the roof, but from the hard trod path alonir the canal you could watch men slipping down th.routih the trees t > the high green bank across the river. Government artillery wa,s registering on the town, sending sudden spoutinirs of stone dust from the houses and the church tower where there was evidently an observation post. Still there was no sensation of danger. Contact and Machine-gun Clatter. For three days you had f«e<?11 on tiie other side of the river while Genera! Aranda's troops had been advancing, and the feeling of danger suddenly running on to cavalry or tanks or armoured carwas something as valid as the dust you breathed or the rain that settled the ■ dust finally and beat on your face in the open car. Xow there was contact iinally between the two armies, and there would be a battle to hold the Ebro. but after uncertainty contact came as a relief. Xow as you watched you saw another man come slipping through the green trees on the other bank, and then three more. Then suddenly, as they were out of sight, camp the sharp, sudden, stabbing, close clatter of machine-guns. With that sound all the walking around, all the dresH rehearsal quality of before the battle was gone. Jhe boy- who had dug shelters for their heads behind the railway bank were right., and from now on theirs was the bu-ines-. l*rom where you stood you could -ce them well protected, waiting solidly. To-morrow it wouid be their turn. You watched til. l sharp slant of bayonet* a noting above the rails. Artillery was j>l"kinir up a li't'c now.! Two came iri at a fai; iy u-.-f-i! place, an 1 as the smoke blew awav a.e.id an! settled throue.'i the ire.-- .u pi ked an i armful of sjiri>i>- onion- from a field ; beside the trail that led t<> the main | Tortosa road. They were the fir<t onion" ! of this spring, and. pe-iing one. found they were plump, white and not too strong. The Ebro delta has fine rich land, and where the onions grow tomorrow there will be a buttle. —