AFTER THE SPELL.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17665, 18 December 1917, Page 7

AFTER THE SPELL.

NEW ZELANDERS RETURN TO THE FRONT,

INCIDENTS OP THE MARCH

(From MALCOLM ROSS, War Correspondent with the N.Z. Forces in the Field.)

BELGIUM, October 3. Tlie country into which we carao some weeks after the '"battle of Mesaines and the lights at La Bassee Villo was one, of quiet rcstfnlness and sylvan beauty. Looked at from any of tho height':, it seemed as one great garden. It was as peaceful as it was picturesque. The flat waterlogged fields of Flanders gave place to rolling downs, with unharmed little villages nestling amid the woods. On the upland stubble p'artridges Hew with a whirr from your feet, and in clear-running waters tho speckled trout rose at the biVwn ephemerae slowly floating down stream. Only there were not so many fish now as there were, for war, apparently, takes its toll of fish as of men. In tho words of the petit bourgeois—-" Cotnpris soldat! Grenade! Finish feeshj" Leaving tho chateau in which'we billeted one' often wandered along winding pfaths beneath tho shade of noble trees of elm and oak and a glorious ami stately copper beech with the first hint of autumnal glory already in its leaves, and so across tho shallow vallev and m> tho slanting avenue that climbed the opposite ridge. The branches met above, lo.'aving only a traccrv of the blue sky. There was an orchard in a sunny dimple of the vale, and ,an old man and his two Htt3e gijandchildren at. work amongst, his poinmes and his pommes de torre. Tho young men were all away—at Verdun, or on tho Craonne, or some, other part of the battlefront.

IPaving climbed this slope, otic came, out upon a" broad view of timbered downs, chess-boarded with the green of brefc and tin; brown of stubble and. fallow fields. The village had become eutirelv enveloped in the bosom of the dark woods, from which only the slender church spire with its Gallic girouet'te escaped. One co-aid see no soldiers- There was no transport visible, though its mufiled rumble floated up from" the depths below, mingledijjjjrtn an occasional cock-crow from the farms, or tho heat of drum where unseen troops were marching. A train passed. bearing men and material to the front. It left a trail of steamy smoke behind, as Hie chuffing of its engine and thm rumble of its wheels died away m tho distance. Then silence, save for tho chirruping of its birds, fell upon the, wood, but only to he broken by another reminder of war—the hum of -a donblecngincd plane, with the firing of its engines momentarily synchronising in a heavier drone. . , The weather was mostly fine, with a breeze tempering the warmth ot the clear sun, and the palp blue above Hooked with rolling masses of cumuli—tho fleecy .shrapnel puffs left after the Thunder of the artillery of the heavens, which, after all cur progress in gunnery, puts to shame the greatest efforts of the mundane war god. It was amidst such scenes that our force, less those of the Rifle Brigade that was burying cable for our Australian friends, passed some weeks, of training, for a force can never be too well trained for war. In this pleasant land there were quiet villages to visit, and pleasant homely people to talk to. And there was neither poison gas nor bursting shells nor bombs—except those used lor the fish! What mattered it, therefore, that good beer .was scarce, and eggs were four shillings a dozen! The war ,was, for tho time being, a. very long way off. In those quiet davs 'ninny a man's thoughts

must have wandered toward home, and of the thousands who delighted in the peace of the bosky hills and dales many an ono must have wondered if ever again ho would tread the homeward path. As these lines are being written, to tho thunder of tho guns in a now sphere ,of action, the question of some has, alas, been already answered in tho negative. ■ The training was varied by trips in motor omnibuses to the seaside for bathing, and it. ,was no uncommon sight, to see some of our men, including the Maoris, helping tho women and the children'and the old men with the ingathering of the late harvest. However, the battle-front of Flanders had suddenly become volcanic again, and was calling for the troops of the farthest dominions to take their places once mere in the firing 7 line heside the men from Mother England. BELGIUM AGAIN. 'Hie Australians were already in the line, and soon they were at grips with the enemy. The New Zoalanders followed, billeting by the way in areas new to them, and at length they marched across the French border, and so int.o the rich flat Flanders lands. where French was spoken with a Flemish accent, and tlie signs on the village sho-,is and on the village tombstones were written in a different language. It was new country to them. They had already! been in Belgium, but,' except for the Brigade and the Pioneers 'who went to dig for the French, never so far north. Here the grain had all been garnered, the hops were., being picked, and tlie potatoes dug, while, on the brick walls of the

cottages the long tobacco leaves were browning hi the warm autumn sun. The sound of gunfire, to which for weeks we had become! unused, grew again familiar. Day and night we could hear tho great bombardments in the hinterland beyond tho ever-widening salient. Portion of the force'billeted in tho country near a great aerodrome, where, morning, noon and night, tlie air vibrated with the hum of many pianos. They swam and gambolled in the air like fish .in a pond, turning over, diving with a spin, and climbing rapidly far above the fields. They performed tho most marvellous antics in the air. but the phlegmatic Flemish, quietly picking their hup harvest, had become so blase to all such sights and sounds of war that they scarcely ever looked up to see what was happening, or what might happen. As wo neared the area of our last baiting place we found the roads alive with a traffic that reminded one of tho Somme in the days .of the great attack. The march and counter-inarch of men went on from daylight till .lark, bands at tho head of the columns, paying the. eld marching tunes, while pipers, after the few preliminary drum boats, Hi row the stocs over their shoulders, and, with their tartan ribbons proudly fluttering in the breeze, set chanter and drcne attune to their wilder Highland strain's—-'''The Cock o* the North,'' "The Bonnets o' Bonnie Dundee,'' and other lilts that for generations have carried their fighting men into the forefront of British batties {Jie world over. The men marched well. The Pioneers i;i one day did a twenty-five- mile march, and didn't growl about it. Tho Maori, who is a cheery optimist, stuck i>. out well, and at the end of the long day was proud of the feat. All day long the transport rumbled past—screams of motor lorries, divisional trains, and ammunition columns light artillery, and many motor-cars, Lurrying with red and blue-tabbed stall officers from armies,' corps, divisions, the envy of tho foot-slogger, and even o° the Brigadiers on horseback. Marching through or with this throng of vehicles were companies, battalions and brigades of men. Occasionally there were blocks in this amazing stream. At times your car got into a backwater of opposing currents 01' crawled along, inept, for all ita t'owor, in the sluggish current. But with it all there

was tho wonderful organisation that so impressed tlie beholder of the great battles of the Somme over "a. year ago now. Tho traffic, tho mastery of the air, and the ever-increasing mass of artillery remain the three wonders of tho war. After some. !a\v days of thk treking we rested awhile in a solid arid stolid Belgian village, and then headed towards the famous salient where ho so m'any thousand English, Canadian and German dead. ft is an everbroadening salient in these days—so broad as almost to make, the military term now a misnomer. But its great cemeteries will for all time remain one of the finest monuments of British courage and endurance that this world will ever see. ARTILLERY A CTIVE.

On the morning that we 'arrived at our final camp the artillery was thundering as if all the seas of all the worlds in storm wore beating on a rock-bound coast- In flights of five and singly, and in twos and threes tho pianos came and went upon their daring and deadly missions. They did the most amassing feats of turtle-turning and spinning nose-diving. But they do much more than that behind the enemy lines. The German planes came too, photographing and observing from great altitudes in tlie daytime, and dropping bombs from lower heights at uiejit on towns and billets and horse lines- They tried to smash our railways and hold up the traffic upon our ro'ads, and though they took their toll of victims, both civil and military, in this they never succeeded, and always we had the satisfaction of knowing that for every ten bombs the enemy dropped on us we gave him buck perhaps a double portion. It is a very sad sight to see men and horses and even women and children killed and mangled by bursting bombs. One night, just after they h'ad come into Belgium, some of the New Zealand reinforcements suffered, and along ono of the main roads some soldiers were hit. Two men in motor-bicycle with side-car were killed. AH this goea to show that we need all the planes we can get at tho battlo front. One morning two Boche planes that had crossed the lines opposite Poperingho came up against four of our planes. They turned and fled, but almost, immediately they ran into some French planes and both were brought down. It was a thrilling sight to see one of the Frenchmen dive after his victim to get tho valued trophy of tho black crosses from the wings_ of the German plane. He dived so quickly that he appeared to be crashing to earth. When our people got up to the field where the German plane had crashed, there was the Frenchman, his head bandaged with a field dressing, calmly cutting out the black crosses. Day after day the weather continued fine—cool nights and calm, sunny days. It was an Indian summer, or, as the French call it, tho Summer of Saint Martin—the summer that comes late. It seemed as if at last Jupiter Pluvius was on our side, and anxious to make amends for his stoppage of the initial offensive. The traffic went' along tho roads in clouds of dust, and there was no anxiety about feeding tho men or tho still more hungry guns. Ammunition went up by the thousand tons, and poured in streams into the raggedGerman line, and all the hinterland. For every shell the enemy shot at us wo seemed to be sending him four or five It was small wonder that the morale of hi.* officers as well as of his men was on the downward grade. The moralo of our troops was never higher*. Ono night word came that our Second Brigadn had to go into the line. Others we knew would soon follow. They were going to t'ako part in the battle for another ridge. There was no man in all the Army that doubted that the enemy would ho driven off that ridge