A TRAGIC ANNIVERSARY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 234, 15 September 1934, Page 4

A TRAGIC ANNIVERSARY

The Battle of The Tanks

EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO

(By “Übique.”)

Eightccu years ago to-day, in the batties oi the Suiuuie, the New Zealand division ol the British army met ita lust test in real modern warfare. It had already won immortality at Gallipoli, but that triumph of courage and endurance deserved, no less than another great British military epic, the famous commentary : “C’est magmtique inais ce n’est pas la guerre.’’ Like the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, it was incoinparuly glorious but it should never have taken place. At Gallipoli our men, practically unsupported by artillery or other modem equipment, struggled with a fanatical heathen enemy under conditions which are unique m military history; but on the Somme two great sections of Western civilisation laced each other, supported in each case by every horror of offence which the science el the day could devise produced in quantities which only modern mas* production could achieve. With the first streaks of dawn of that Friday the fifteenth of September, 1916, the whole New Zealand army in France, as part of a much larger British attacking force, advanced, ou a six-mile front, to the assault of tho famous system of German defences known as the Kiers line. The real objective of this attack was to capture and make secure those dominating ridges which gave, by their use for observation, the mastery of the Somme battlefields to whichever side possessed them. The attack was supported by the greatest concentration of artillery that the world had ever seen. This was no haphazard warfare. Every move of those hundred thousand infantrymen and every shell tired by those fifteen hundred guns was planned for weeks ahead and resulted in a marvel of cooperation and a perfection of offensive barrages never before attempted. It is now history that the battle begun on that day, when, for the first time, the tanks fought side by side with the infantry, was completely successful. It proved, once again, the mettle of our division and that of some of the King’s oldest and newest regiments. As a cause of pride, and for its cost in life and limb and tears it will never be forgotten in New Zealand, and those who took part in it will never forget the friends they parted with that day, or that, for all its scientific planning, it took much individual resource, cold steel aud hot blood to carry it through. It would be unnatural and grossly unfair to the dead never to reflect upon tho glorious deeds of war. There are many however who fear that to do justice to the heroes of the past is to encourage the spirit of war in the youth of all nations and «> to foster the growth of another disaster. Let these rather join with us in proclaiming that the glorious deeds we commemorate will never bo repeated. Tho latest frightful inventions of man, or the devil, have insured that future wars will provide no comparison with the past. Should a future war call for any heroism from the uniformed combatants it will certainly provide them with infinitely more cause for shame. Future heroes will be obliged to gauge their prowess by the number of women and children they can poison in their beds or burn in tho ruins of their homes. Let us. by al! means, remember, when we honour the heroes of the “war to end all war,” that we ail still have our part to play in tho realisation of that greatest of all objectives.