GRIM GAME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 9, 11 January 1940, Page 17

GRIM GAME.

DUTIES ON PATROL.

"COWBOYS AND INDIANS."

BRITISHERS IN FRANCE. (Special.—By Air Mall.) LONDON, Dec. 20. With a grim sense of humour, one correspondent with the British troops in France describes the patrol activities there as "cowboys and Indians." The outpost men fight under appalling weather conditions, and when they return from forward positions in lonely no man's land, they are turned into statues of frozen mud. Their overcoats, battle dress, and gumboots are caked solid. Their coats, indeed, become so stiff that they can take them off and stand them upright. "For some days my little lot lived standing up in a shallow hole dug in deep mud," said a still cheerful sergeant-major from Leeds. "There was nowhere we could lie down. We just leaned against the mud earthworks in front —when we weren't on sentry—and dozed. "I think the young ones have taken it even better than the old reservists who have just come out of civil life and are not hardened yet. "But most of our lads are pretty tough North Countrymen, and are sticking it wonderfully." Outpost Against Patrol. These men in the outposts are having almost as dangerous and tense an experience during the long winter nights as the patrols who creep through the darkness. At any moment a. group of Germans, advancing silently like ghosts, may attack them. One little incident, related nonchalantly by a good-humoured platoon sergeant from Dublin—he bears quite a resemblance to another Irishman in the British Expeditionary Force, Lord Gort, the Commander-in-Chief—showed starkly how life hangs sometimes by a thread. With other men he was in a forward position during the night. "Our job was to keep contact with the Germans in case they started anything, to observe rather than to fight," he said. "Suddenly there was a flash in front of us and an explosion. Someone had flung a hand grenade over the barbedwire protection. "We Lay Absolutely Still." "We lay absolutely still. Then a strong patrol of Germans began walking towards our post. I could see them clearly in the gloom, even count them. They came forward in Indian file. "I had my finger tight against the trigger of my revolver. If one of us had coughed then, well—the fun would have started. But they passed on, just 10 yards from us.'' Every night, at one post or another, 1 there is a similar incident.