COMPLETE BOREDOM

Evening Star, Issue 25419, 26 February 1945, Page 3

COMPLETE BOREDOM

N.Z. DIVISION IN ITALY LONG WINTER STALEMATE (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent.) FAENZA, February 22. This is one of the most monotonous periods in the New Zealand Division's history. Ahead of this gloomy, halfwrecked town our infantry, is s£ill in the line facing the forbidding Senio stopbank. Around us is a sea of mud'. Amid groves of skeleton trees are artillery positions, and through Faenza rumbles a constant procession of trucks bearin - varied insignia. The winter has brought a stalemate which is even more oppressive than that of last year, a stalemate of watchfulness and constant patrolling. It has been like this for weeks now. The snows have departed from most of the front under the barely perceptible warmth of the early .spring sunshine, but the nights seem to be as cold as ever. *

In some places our line meets the Senio River itself; in others a few hundred yards separate the New Zealand infantry positions from tho dominating bulk of the stopbank which towers to a height of nearly 40ft above the flat country ou either side. The flat bog of no-man’s land is speckled with the bare trunks of trees.

During the hours of daylight there is little movement and less shooting in the forward areas. Now and again there is the measured rhythm of a Vickers gun firing on a fixed line, or the swift tearing crump of a nebelwerfer, or the confident roll of troop-fire. Mainly there is the expectant silence born of many watching eyes straining for a betraying move across the intervening stretch o£ mud.

At night the weariness is redoubled as the guards search the emptiness about the wire-fringed farmhouses for the presence of hostile patrols. Our own patrols quarter the ground ahead watching for movement or listening for sounds of digging, of-wiring, or of unguarded voices. The following day there are reports to be investigated, but on the surface of it nothing seems to happen.

That is how it lias been, and that is how it will continue until some night when the ground is perhaps a little drier or , other conditions are more favourable to either side. Then the war we have known will spring into its full stride again.