WAR PRACTICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 306, 28 December 1939, Page 6

WAR PRACTICE.

OLD BATTLEFIELDS.

EARTH GROANS FROM NEW

BLOWS.

tragi-comic stort retold

(By WALTER DURANTY.)

With the R.A.F. in France

By the roadside a big red sign says "Danger Zone," and. a stout French soldier halts the motor for a permit. He salutes you and you drive on into ten square mile® in what is actually no more than the area reserved for practice by the Franco-British Air Force. But never were name nor place chosan better. For this was the scene of some of the most prolonged and doughty lighting of the last war and of one terrific battle in 1918. The officers who selected the target ground had an easy job, for there was no need to move away the French peasants from these trench-scarred slopes and shell-pocked plateaus, where nothing grows save stunted bushes and where no living creature is in sight. Here and there in the valleys you pass a placard with the name of the village that once stood there. There is no ruin nor eight of stone to mark former habitation — only an occasional small apple tree or vine or ras perry plant. Along the lowcrest of hills which formerly Mas a German battery position there are dotted at half-mile, intervals concrete pill-boxe:. miniature forts about 20ft square, which emerge ten feet above the ground, their sides thickly banked with earth and stone. They are the only buildings anywhere in sight. All around one where I stood to watch the bombing practice there was no space five yards square free from old shell craters, save where a narrow road winds up to the pillbox

entrance. Bombers at Play. On one side lav a dusty German helmet, further on a email grenade bomb from a trench mortar •with a wing-edged tail to direct its flight. High in the air on the left soared a fleet of French pursuit 'planes, and as they dived I heard the rattle of machine-guns. Beyond them in the distance another 'plane must have been towing a target. I couldn't see it against the sun, but I heard the staccato firing of an antiaircraft battery. Overhead droned heavy English bombers to converge upon a target marked with a pink cross in the middle of a sandy plain. With the, naked eye it was possible to detect the bomb falling at what seemed a long distance short of the target. It struck and there was an instant's delay, then a cloud of smoke and dust so much nearer the target than I expected that at first I was surprised, until I realised that the bomber must allow for the great speed at which the ship is flying.

1940 May nineteen-forty bring us peace J May strife and cruel warfare cease! May evr'y nation now be free! Unloosed the chains of tyranny! May all dictators he o'crthrown! May each man call his soul his own! Unfettered each his faith profess! And worship in hit lowliness! May wives to widows not be turned! A.n<t orphans' tearful pleadings spurned! May little children sleep secure! May Right and Faith and Hope endure! May helpless victims patient be! Ood grant them strength and sanctuary! May ruthless butchers silenced be! Requited for their treachcry! May Britons keep our honour bright! A'o craven flight—but stubborn fight! May happy homes in evr'y land Attest the Allies' loyal stand! May honour for the plighted word In pagan lands once more be heard! God's comfort for all helpless folk Now crashed beneath the tyrants' yoke! May nineteen-forty bring us peace And send a war-torn world release! —ELLA BASTEN.

Then afterwards the dull, heavy thud of an explosion, as if the earth herself wgs groaning to receive new blows from men, her children. The phrase, "Now it may be told," has already reared its ugly head in this war. Some days ago there occurred an incident which I wished to write of because it combined high tragedy with a note of comedy, yet reached a happy ending. Authority forbade until—to the bitter annoyance of all the correspondents here—it was broadcast from London. Nevertheless, I cannot forbear to retell it, at least in part, because T knew the men to whom it happened and saw them return to "somewhere in France," rather dilapidated in appearance but very much alive and kicking.

"Thank Heaven, Home at Last." "Oh, yes, we had a hell of a time," they said cheerfully, "but we did get back all right." The story, as you may have heard, was that their 'plane was icebound in a night flight over Germany at a great height in a cold of 30 degrees below zero. They tried to get home, but when a crash was inevitable they bailed out and reached the ground safely, although the 'plane was wrecked. But that is only the background ■of the tragi-comic climax. When the 'plane commander gave the order to jump, he found it was impossible to communicate with the machine-gunner in a rear turret. Either the boy was stupefied with the cold or something had gone wrong with the telephone. So the commander set the controls for the ship to glide and out he jumped—there was nothing else to do. At that point, it seems—and is told amid roars of laughter—the gunner, who had indeed been dazed by the cold, suddenly roused himself and muttered happily, as he relates, "Thank Heaven, we are home at last, and gliding down to the airheld. I never thought we'd make it." A minute later the ship crashed and burst into flames, but the gunner was miraculously thrown clear and escaped with some cuts and bruises.—N.A.NA.