SILHOUETTES ON THE SKYLINE

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 189, 12 August 1939, Page 12 (Supplement)

SILHOUETTES ON THE SKYLINE

INCIDENTS THAT LIVE

(Contributed by John A. Lee, D.C.M., M.P.)

J ALWAYS have a feeling of respect as I think of my comrades who marched the cobbled streets of France in the uniform of the Ne\y Zealand Expeditionary Corps. In one's mind there lingers a thousand memories of gallantry amid incredible conditions. Here and there from the thousand incidents, one stands out with an eternal vividness. In the winter of the Messines and other great Ypres offensives, the Xew Zealand Division was doing' trench duty around about the Ypres salient. Polygon, Zillebecke, Zonnebecke, the Butte, all these names stand out in one's mind as the location of day to day hardihood, for it took toughness and endurance to exist in a battlefield gone quiet after an offensive, as well as to advance behind the thunderous barrage during attack. In the winter of 1916-17 the Ota go and Canterbury Regiments were round about the Ypres salient, that incredible eharnel house where the earth was literally drenched with human blood. I had friends in the Otago and Canterbury Regiments, and, on a day when one would

be at work digging a trench or repairing a road or marching into fatigue or into the trench itself, the Ota go and Canterbury men would be going by. moving out

to billets, moving up to the line, niovi:ig lip to engage in fatigue, moving up for the purpose of salvaging tlie thousands of tons of battlefield equipment that lay a bout.

I remember I whs in a )>ill-l><i.v to the right front of the Butte. I think - although I ain not sure —thai the location had once been Polygon Wood; a'though there was little 1 left; only a churned crater field with the crate!* man-deep and full to the l>rim with lilthv water, so that by staggering off a duck walk one could easily have drowned. And yet, about that incredible charnel house Now Zealanders went with courage aiul fortitude: courage and fortitude hard to understand, for spring was coming, and with spring, giant offensives. Russia was down and out. and the Germane were mobilising on the Western Front. The British offensives for the year had passed away, although there were still attempts to straighten trench lines being made here «nd there, and the line was in a state of nerves. The artillery in the rear positions were literally squatting on a moving morals, and. in all probability, every heavy howitzer shell that was fired from some of tile big guns thrust those big guns dee|>er into the mire, ilule trains, attempting to bring in ammunition, were bogged. Dead horses and ruined lumber were every where. The Ypres offensives had <»

perished in tlie mud, Hie gallantry of men beindrowned by invulnerable hhiditions rather than having been subdued by machine-gun fire. Courage was required at zero, when all the guns flashed to a mitrhty stunt overture, but courage was required to live between the offensives in the eharnel house and Xew Zealanders lived and were, all things considered, cheerful. I lived for a short time in a trench overlooking Polderhoek Chateau. I'olderhoek was the grim, reinforced concrete remains of a chateau, but little except a few concrete foundations could be seen with the naked eye, or even with binoculars. Two or three offensives had swept up to Polderhoek and men, finding it im |«>ssible to pierce reinforced concrete with bayonets, had been shot down around the walls. So it was. that Polderhoek was t lie centre of a small salient.

Churned Earth, Mud, Men I lived on one angle of the salient looking towards Polderhoek over a valley filthy with churned earth, mud and men. There was no barbed-wire between the German and the British lines, but barbed-wire was scarcely necessary. Anyone who Jiad attempted to flounder overland by the direct route would have been drowned in the bog. With the terrific bombardment that was maintained on Polderhoek and it« environs by New Zealand nrtillerv and British howitzers, means of communication did not exist. Wires, cables, must have been cut as rapidly as they were laid. Soldiers will remember how. throughout the night, the German occupants of the trench lines or of shell holes and of Polderhoek itself would signal to their headquarters and to the artillery in the rear with a stream of brilliant rockets. Starting at one end of the sector and passing right on to the other end, up into the dark sky overhead, would shoot the German brilliants, brilliants composed of six and seven and eight stars of various colours. The first time I was in a line facing Polderhoek I was in a trench. The next time 1 had the fortune to be one of those occupying a very large pill-box on the crest of the hill beside Polderhoek. The. British line turned sharply to the left a little distance from where we were and ran over the crest of a hill, the line turning away at a right angle. While we were in that pill-box ,J witnessed a demonstration of the pluck of men that impressed itself for ever on my mind.

Jt was decided by some higher command—whether intelligently or stupidly I am not going to say —that the elbow in the line should be straightened out. Suddenly, the country froze over, and advance could be made with comparative ease. Instead of wading neck deep through an impassable bog there was firm, clear footing on which the feet rang. But the frozen nature of the country brought its own terrors, for •shells detonated rapidly on the frozen earth and spread their destructiveness horizontally, whereas when the earth was soft they penetrated deeply and tended to throw their fragments perpendicularly. (To be continued.)