WAR MUSEUM AT THE FRONT

Evening Star, Issue 16627, 9 January 1918, Page 5

WAR MUSEUM AT THE FRONT

RELICS TRAGIC AND COMIC. In a quaint old place some miles behind the battle line ate .housed many curious relics from famous battlefields and illustrations of phases of daily life m the trenches, destined in due course to form part of-the National-War Museum. Here may be seen, for example, the' old First Corps flag earned by the heroic Gough at Xpres, and the hat and bayonet of the slain Australian soldier which were planted on the summit of the Pozjexes Ridge. There is comedy in the scoTes of trench signs and dug-out legends, and—somewhat grimmer com«dy this—in the specimens of. the sniper's camouflage. One may see the carved oak table from /shelled Arras used by Sir Douglas Haioat Ins headquarters throughout the battle ! of the .Sommc. There are other memorials of Sir Douglas Haig. There is the FirstCorps Headquarters ■flaa; which he carried in tjlie Mons retreat, his first flag as mander of the First Armv, of the Marne and the eariv Belgian campaigns._ There is a British Red Ensign •from Verdun, the gift of the commandant of the citadel, which was suspended in that fortress during the German attack last year; the Union Jack which the Warwicks brought into Peronne and placed in the Grand Place, together with their crest and motto painted on a -wooden panel. There ' are several other flags of -great interest, of -which one must not forget to mention the first tank's flag, the first Portuguese flag in the trenches, the first American flag to fly in France after the declaration- of war *by the ' President, o?i the Hotel de Ville, Paris. There are German flags, too, a-s, for?, instance, a large - one unearthed' in the Hotel do Ville at Peronne, another from Beaumont Hamel. But, in the matter of fkugs, the pride of place must surely be given to the great Union- Jack unfurled in the early days of August, 1914, from the Hotel de Ville at Boulogne, to greet our arriving troops, the first of our national banners to be officially flown in France. After flags come captured guns. But there is only room here for the smaller engines of war, such as trench mortars, minenwerfer and granatenwerfer, with a few machine gims damaged in battle. There is a great, ungainly minenwerfer captured at Vimy hy the Canadians, and other pieces taken by the Scottish Rifles, the Royal Engineers, and other units in special circumstances of valor. There are dozens of enemy rifles, inscribed: with the names of villages in the Somme or Arras region, where .hand-to-hand conflicts were waged. One could write a long chapter * on these rifles alone—from the first brought back- from a dead German in the great retreat to one wrenched from the hands of a Bavarian giant at St. Julien only the other day, not until he had slain several of our men'. German material is here in profusion—shells of every calibre, shell oases and basket carriers, flammenwerfer, bombs, axes, knives, pistols, wire-cutters, and a unique collection of trench, clubs, "including one with a flexible handle and a heavy steel head, positively devilish in its ingenuity. There are also to be seen a series of gas alarm gongs, a German field telephone with a history, and- a* German bicycle on which an adventurous 1 Bpche rode up to our lines to the Menin Gates, ■■ Ypres. _ Scattered through this museum are life-size figures attired in enemy uniforms and modelled and colored • by a colonel who is also a, "Royal Academi- » rian. In one case tho head and body armor has been scoured and burnished, so that the white still glitters, and makes the figure look like a representation of a ihedieval -warrior. Over his shoulders he carries a cross-bow, • -which discharged grenades in the winter of and behind him is one of our own catapults which saw service at Jveuve Chapelle.