LAST DAYS OF THE FIGHTING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 90, 10 January 1919, Page 6

LAST DAYS OF THE FIGHTING

NEW ZEALANDERS IN OPEN WARFARE ~ i BEYOND THE HINDENBURG LINE.

(From Coptain Malcolm Ross, Now' Zealand War Correspondent.) October 15, 1918. Events have marched quickly since we crossed the Hindenburg line, and the days havo been crowded with incident and adventures. From day to day 1 have given in my cable messages details of the fighting in which the New Zealanders- 60 successfully engaged, but u fuller account of the exploits of individual brigades, late as they may reach the Dominion by mail, may prove of interest.

„ With the Southern Brigade. Ilou already know of tho splendid advance of the North and South IslandBrigades to the capture of the Bon Avis Eidge. In this article I ptirpasu dealing more particularly with the fighting in which the South Islanders engaged in this fight. On September 27 the brigade ■ received orders to rendezvous at Havriucourt Wood, MKX) yards >bcyond where' they were then located. Thence they marched to an area 'south-west of RibVcpurt near the Grand Ravine, which lends down to the bend of tho Canal de l'Escaut—the waterway between- Cambrai and St. Quentin. That meant another marcTi of between seven and eight thousand yards. The position ahead was 'obscure. Bon Avis Eidgo was our objective, and we wero told that Welsh Ridge in front of it had been already captured. But the English troops were only on the nearer slopes of . Welsh Ridge, and tho 1 ridge itself was still to l-be taken. There was now no time for [ reconnaissance, and ' it was. hurriedly decided to assvmlble at Surrey Ridge, sev.en or eight hundred yards west' of Welsh Ridge. The night was dark and cold, and the German aeroplanes were busy bombing. A platoon of the Rifles mot with casualties from these bombs, but the South Islanders escaped. At 3 a.m., under a barrage, 'the troops went over the Hindenburg line, with its deep .trenches, and its maze of wire.' There was only the feeble light of a sinking moon, and as it dipped to the horizon darkness cloaked the battlefield. The Command had some qualms of con : science ' about attacking such a stronghold in (he darkness but'..these were not justified, for the element of surpriss of the enemy saved us casualties and more than vindicated the adoption of the plan. Welsh Ridge little .opposition was met with, and; for the most part, 'cur men.simply walked over it. They pressed on to the attack of tho Bon Avis Ridge with' unflagging determination, meeting with machine-gun fire,, out this eased off later, and all went well except for a slight check to some Otago men; who came up against a bolt of barbed wire. The first word of the 'success of our troops on tho ridge came from North Island troops. Away on the right Xa Vacqueric had riot yet been cleared up by Fjnglish troops, so that Southerners suffered some casualties from this direction, and their progress, in consequence, was somewhat slower than otherwise, it would have been.- Machineguns were shooting at them from their right rear. On the whole, however, tho casualties ■ vrere" slight,. and. the enemy, completely taken by surprise in the darkness, scarcely knew'what to.do, and surrendered freely. Boforo the end of the day the ridge was entirely ours, and we'had captured well over 1000 prisoners- , ' Incidents of the Fighting.

Two somewhat unusual incidents that occurred during the day are worth recording. In the advance two of the South Islanders were wounded. One of them was so badly hit that'he could not even crawl away. A German, taking pity on him, got him down into one of the dugouts in the line, ,-and. left on the dugout a label both in German and in English: "Do not bomb this dugout, there is a wounded English officer in it." Later in the day this officer was found and rescued.

Tho other incident, however, does not redound to the credit of our opponents; A Christchurch \ corporal • was lying wounded on the-field, and.some of the enemy coming upon him wanted 'to kill him. He was quite defenceless, but 'fortunately one of our Pioneers arrived on the scene, nnd interfered so successfully that his life-was saved.

The position captured contained nests of machine-guns., Afterwards it was shelled by the enemy mostly with his 77mm. high-velocity guns.; but the ridge, once taken, had gone for ever so far as the Germans were concerned.'/ The main feature of the attack was the splendid advance made by the men in the darkness. -...■. , .

It was. not till October 8 that the South Islanders had again to engage in serious fighting. On that dale the New Zealand Division, in conjunction with the 37th Division on its right and the 3rd Division on its left, had to attack across the canal. Here ran the trenches and belt after belt 1 of the wire of the Masnieres-Beaurevoire line. The Rifle Brigade was on the left in the nart of the attack allotted to the New Zoalanders. The jumping-off place was beyond Crevecour. They wcro already through the Masnieres line but the Southerners on their right, south of Crevecour, starting further back, had to get through a broad belt of wire. During tho day preceding the attack, an endeavour was made to cut tho wire with 6-inch mortars and the heavies, Ibut there: tvag so much wire and so little time to do the cutting, that there were few gaps made in it. Our attack was timed for 4.30 a.m. The weather was fine.

Advance in the Dark. The troops assembled'in the darkness. Otago men on the right, a Canterbury battalion on tho left. They crossed the canal after a march from la/Vacquerie and were in position by 9 p.m. They had no trouble in crossing tho bridges, but after they had assembled they were heavily shelled for the, rest of the right up to the time of their starting. They got. away to the minute behind a good barrage, the main trouble being tn keen direction in the darkness. A compass bearing had, however, been worked out, and by this the officers steered. As the leading waves readied tho Mansieres line with its broad .belts of wire, dawn, fortunately, was just breaking. Even so it was' not, easy to fret throu<rh Hint wire. I tried to cross'it myself Inter in the wake of our troops in broad ihylicht and found few gaps'. Our men had scramblpd Ihroujh it in pWns. tearing their clones, and ppHiwr. their hands and legs scratched. Others found a few irnns. Some few remniii"d—('""d in the labyrinth, caught in the ftranck Others had been wounded there bv ipnchi'ic-i'iin Crp. I,„ r fW-„ 1,,.1 V», :-«-o v by the devoted ptreto>>nr-lie<ii , crs. TMn was tho end of the Ffindcnburg system on this part, of the front, and wo'knew that the nightmare line was now for ever behind us. What one marvelled at was that we had got through it =o cheaply. Earlier in Hie war we could not have done so, but the stamina, the numbers, and the moral of the German armies were better in those days. For some time now it would seem as if the ennmv had been putting ivp a gigantic bluff. Nevertheless th e splendid- feat of the New Zealanders this day marked an important and a critical stage in the advance.

Heroic Platoon Officer. When one of the young- Otagp officers was leading his meij over the wire ho found himself staring straight at tho barrel of a fioche machine-gun. Calling upon his platoon to follow him, they nil rushed straight for the gun, and the crew, cowed with the impetuosity of tho attack, promptly throw up their hands, cried "Kamerad," and surrendered. If there is one word in the German language that is more familiar than another to the New Zealander abroad it is that blessed word "Kamerad." On our right this switch swung round in a southerly direction for between two and three hundred yards. That bit of it was,supposed to have been taken by troops on our flank, but they had suffered heavily from artillery fire, so a New Zealand battalion commander had to send a platoon off our sector to take it. It was not an easy task, hut they sue-

ceeded. In tho taking of it they captured twenty-five Huns and four ma-chino-guns. There wore also some dead Huns about the machine-gun pits. Others, wounded,- we treated later in our dressing stations. This was the work of the Ist Otago Company. After this there .was not much trouble in taking the first objective, which was on a Hue running due east from the front of Lcsdin, which had fallen to the Rifle Brigade. There our men dug in, whileanother company wont through them and straight on past Pelu Wood, which was not a wood in reality, but-only a scrubby copso. Thenco they fought on to their final objective—a line south-west of the village of Esnes. . They had to pass through another belt of wire of another switch line. This wire also was uncut, but it was not so thick as that already encountered, there being only one double belt of it. A certain amount of fire coming from the high ground on the right did not interfere with them very much. In fact, they had a pretty clear run through. The two rear companies, which were to exploit beyond this final objective, suffered fairly Iteavy casualties in the initial stages of the advance from enemy shell-fire, and one of the company commanders was killed. They wero bent upon tho capture of Esnes, but the story of that fight must be left to a succeeding article. Two companies of the Otagans were to go on to the'capture'of Esnes at an early hour, but, by arrangement with tho division on our right this attack was postponed till 9.30. It was a beautifully fine day. with scarcely a breatli of wind, and the smoke from the: bursting British shells in the bombardments along the front roso straight in tho air. One walked across open connt-y flushing partridges and haTes from the feet of the dead and the litter of war with which the ground was cumbered. From the heights beyond advanced Divisional Headquarters there was a magnificent view of the great battlo. Wo could see our men advancing and the enemy retreating beyond Esnes, and on the slopes away in the direction of Caudrev. Two raw-boned, lanky Highlanders', who had been deerstalkers and were now battle scouts, wero observing under an English officer. They had a grandstand view, and were as keen as if they were stalking a royal in tho slens of Sutherlandshire. "Weel, Kennv," said ode of them as his mate caine'back from a neighbouring village bearing a fine Gorman storeoscopic per> scope, "I see ye've been sooveneenn, and Kenny admitted tho soft impeachment, and'lamented the fact that one of the "glesses" of the periscope had been broken by an English bullet. He told me that 'he had come across some Australians in the village, but Kennys knowledge of the Empire's people and of its geography was limited, for on going into the village myself I found the Raid Australians were Maoris from, our own Division. They, too, were souyeneering, and to some purpose. Tlwe is little that can add to the comfort or the cuisine'of- man that escapes the keen eye of the.Maori in this war.

■ Capture of Esnes. For an hour or so after the first, rush there was a lull on our front. North and eouth the guns were still thundering. The smoking German dumps behind the lines .and the fog of a smoke barrage, brightened by the clear sun and contrasting with the dark woods of valley and rounded ridge, all combined to make a stirring picture. Presently | our batteries again gave tongue, and the blue-grey of our shells bursting in and alxjut Esnes aded to, the interest of the? battle and"the variety of the scener Any head'that was above ground there was in danger of being cracked. Kenny, who jwas peering through his telescope, spoke: "You see yon mull," he said. Yes, wo saw the mill—like a German pill-box perched on the skyline. "Weel, follow tho line of trees on yon road down to tho cemetery an' on ae the Iqngsart Rond. YonV Boche rinnin' away. They're cleerin' oot o J - Esnes. I'h thiukin'' it's gettin' Wo hot a. shop for. them there." Yes. sure enough,, they were enemy soldiers Agoing backthere was no mistaking their field grey against the green hillside. They went as I once saw the 6tnrtled red deer go in a_glen in Arran; slowly at first, then halting to discern which way the danger lay, and finally making up their minds to get clean away over the ridge. And, nearer at hand, in front of the smoking village, were our own ibrave New Zealanders, following the quarry. -Already, wo knew that Esnes was theirs. One company went through the village, another round to the right. The tanks that were to have helped them, for some good reason, no doubt, had not come up, but really they were not needed. Some 1 Bodies were killed, somo wounded, and in the village itself • our ,men gathered up an officer and thirty-eight other ranks. Away on the right, on the 130 contour, one company was still going on under fairly heavy machine-gun .'fire from the right,-flank. But this fire eventually died down, and the two companies of Ofagans, joining hands, on the other side of tho village, linked up with Canterbury on the left. Patrols then pushed out towards] the "sucrerio," where, in more peaceful' times, the beet was crushed; but, in order to keep in touch, further progress was, delayed, and our men had to be content with holding a -line just in front of Esnes, as we already had a flank on the right to look after.

Across the Battlefield. I pushed on across the canal to get a nearer view, through Lesdon, where I saw the dead of the Canterburys and of the "Rifle .Brigade, but many more of the soldiers in field grey lying prone on the sward and along the sunken roads. In a cutting' was «. mangled, heap of German prisoners—a round dozen—killed by one of their own shells, and on a flat near the village , many more, all killed by one New Zealand platoon. These lay mostly on their faces. They had fallen iVrward as they ran away, but, as there was neither trench or dugout there to shelter them, their doom was sealed from the moment they appeared' in the open. Further on were other German dead, one, a machinegunner, with his hands half up 'and lub lips parted as if he was about to cry "Kamerad" when he fell. There Were houses with roofs and walls almost unbroken in Lesdon, and gardens in which vegetables grew and flowers still blossom, ed in Esnes. There was also the litter left by the German looters, broken clocks, smashed mirrors and furniture, and the garments, food, and bedding of hurriedly evacuated civilians in some of the houses that I looked into. But one had to look carefully, for thero were cunningly devised. traps that, if a wire were pulled ont of tho way, or a picture were lifted from the wall, would send the unwary to kingdom come. Later, two men of the tanks, lifting a dead German to bury him, were injured by one of these traps. In another town an officer playing a'piano had his hand blown off. Thero were bridges destroyed by high explosives, great craters at -the crossroads, 'and, in other roads, live mines that had not yet gone off. Our engineers were soon dealing with all thfs<;. and it was not long before traffic sot through.

A Counter-Attack, Tn tlio wiWv afternoon the Roche heRan to shell Esnes, and such of us as had no serious business there deemed it wise to get out. At half-past three the enemy counter-attacked. About half a hundred Huns came down the torrent of Esnes, which in dry weather at all events is only a. watercress stream. This attack the* Now flealanders easily smashed with rifle and Lewis Run fire. About half the attacking force was killed and wounded. The rest ran away. We got one 77mm. 'high-velocity gun. in the days' attack, and soveral machine-guns, as well as prisoners. For the rest of the day there was nothing more to be done, and our men dug in for tho night. Esnes had fallen with/less cost to us than might have been expected in a daylight attack. Our men were still in good form, still pager for the fray. They were able to improve their commissariat with vrgctablos gathered from the gardens and Bnl.ls. cv,,,,-.. r li a „, n i:,.„ t-hoJv =tcpl l.«l. mets, were comical-sights, wearing belltnmicrs and bowler hats lhat the civilians had' left behind. Many .of them had ronfs over their heads thai night— tho first for many a long day. The warre"* of the Hindenbiu'e lino were far behind.