ANZACS AT THE FRONT

Nelson Evening Mail, 31 July 1916, Page 2

ANZACS AT THE FRONT

j INTO A BATTERED TOWN. I A DAY IX THE FIRING LINE. 1 ,' (Second Article.) I (From Malcolm Ross, Oflicial War Cor- \ respondent with the New Zealand ; Forces.) i NORTHERN FRANCE. June 4. | In a preceding article I told how the ! New Zealand Brigades inarched out to I (he front. At the end of the first day ', thev came t<« a town where there was j comparative quiet, though the. boom of the distant guns- could he clearly hear). ! For a little while thev rested there in '■ billets, rather crowded. In such towns the men can wan-der about the streets and buy almost anything in ihe .-hops. and in the estaminets thev can get the wine of the country, and mild beer tint "ill not do anyone harm. There are also cinemas and conceit halls. At the present time an excellent London Concert Company is touring the. district. In one of the large tents of the Y.M.C.A.. who. by the way. are doing excellent ; work here as in Egypt and at the Da l '- j dandles, a vesting battalion of Briti-m : Tommies congregated in force the other ! afternoon, and the pianist, an excelle.it j tenor, a violinst, and the comic man wore heartily applauded. To men eom- ' ing out of the trenches such an enterj a great treat. THE PADRE AND THE CINEMA. One Sunday I wandered into one of the cinema halls in a town that had just ' escaped the German onrush. It had a j little stage, with scenery painted by the ; Tommies themselves. Resides the j operator's stall there was even a l>o\ ' for otiiccrs. True, it was not regal in ] its furnishings, hut it filled the bill. The seats on the sawdustod floor were pro vision boxes. The stage was occupied . by an Anzac padre, one who was mirli , under shot and shell in the. Gallipoli J trenches. The hall was filled with ofH- ! cers and soldiers gravely listening to his ! sermon. Flaring posters of the cinema j shows decked the walls —''Harry Dav presents 'Kiss me. Serjeant." 'To-nigh r"s ! the' Niaht.' " and similar themes. The ', padre himself must have been struck I with the incongruity of his surroundings. j though they did not detract one iota ! from the forcibleness of his sermon. He I would no doubt bo the first to reco»1 nise that the cinema as well as the se. - I moni has a place behind the lines in these I times. And T myself have a distinct j recollection of a young padre hastening j away from a good meal in an officer-' I mess to arrange one of these cinema shows fo rniir men. In this particular hnll of which I am writing there have been Saturday evening concerts and bo-r----ing matches as well as moving pictures. and nuite recently a number of Maoris delighted the Tommies and astonish ?d the natives with a vigorous presentation of one of their old war dances. KNIGHTS ON WHEELS. As the New Zealanders marched o>jt to the front they were able to obtai-: some idea- of the extent to which mechanical transport is used in modern j warfare. Great motor lorries were drawn up in long columns by the roadI <<tde, or rumbled past with ammunition and provisions and a hundred and on-: other things. Motor-cars, motor ambulances, motor cycles, and the ordinaly bicycle also moved to and fro along th ; j three-lined roads. When you see a motor- , lorry numbered 27695 von are inclined ; to rub your eyes audi look again. But i there is no doubt about it. In this war I rietrol counts, and the consumption must 1 be enormous. A whole army has been ; shifted on to a threatened flank and the ; situation saved by the taxi-cabs of 'i city. True there are horse teams also on ' these, roads. At Gallipoli we had to 1 man-handle our .guns and even our shells. I but here you find the horse still har j nesscrl to the field mm and howitzer of j moderate calibre, though one day quite j recently T saw some huge things swaihj ed in tarpaulins being drawn across our i front by extraordinary engines with cali erpillar" wheels, that made one conjure ! up visions of antediluvian animals that ' lived when the denizens of this world i fought with tusks and teeth. OccasionI ally ;>'ou do see an officer or a man I astride a horse. But the man in a hurry . takes a, motor-car. Your modern knight< i is a knight on; wheels—that is when le ! is not a-" knight with wings. Day and I night this mechanical transport goes j snorting and rumbling by, the heavyladen lorries shaking the very earth. I making the windows rattle, and -waking ' you in your sleep. THE .BATTERED TOWN. i After a brief spell in the first town | they came to the New Zealanders marchi ed on to another nearer the firing line. I It was one of the towns that are quite i within the reach of the Gernrm gunners, . and when one took one's walks abroad or went to buy tobacco or to get shaved there was alwayis the possibility that I that would be the last tobacco you would 1 buy or the last shave yon would get. "From this place the New Zealanders i went into the trenches. 1 went with a i Staff officer through the town for a little ' distance in a car. At the end of a street I on which the grass was growing we left the car, and commenced a hot and tirel some walki. The street up which we J -went had been shelled and shelled again. I The: guns were firing as we went. Save | for an officer and a few men not a soli : tary soul walked 1 that street. A glance ' into the shops and 1 the houses revealed I only deplorable ruin. Some of the scenes

! wore pathetic. In one house a perambulator half buried in (.ho huddle of bricks and mortar, and a cup half-full of tea- on a table indicated a precipitate flight from the German shells. One wondered what had happened to the baby. Was it still alive, or was it alive and an orphan? Almost every house and every shop- in that street had been hit. There wcic some buildings that were in absolute ruin. Others were holed, but still habitable. Tiled roofs were torn and rent as if they had been made of paper. Gaps of Mi.ried dimensions were there t-o let in the rain or the sunshine. Thu dust left from falling bri.k and mortar lay thick on table, chair, and bedstead, undisturbed since the day the people nad fled. A rat ran through the ruin, prowling for provender. IN THE TRENCHES. It was a relief to turn from such a scene, and entering a communication trench, make direct for the firing line. The trench was rather shallow. In places one did not feel too secure in it. It was floored with the now familiar battens of the "duck walk," and though the trenches were rapidly drying under the influence of a lengthy spell of summer sunshine there were places where the duck boards squished into the murk\ water. In this flat wet land the trenches are not trenches in the ordinary sense of the word. They consist mainly of a zig-zag sandbagged wall, though to be strictly accurate it is ,good French soil that fills tho bags, and that, as everyone knows, is not so satisfactory for the purpose as sand. In these days of armour-piercing bufhts a man may be hit by rifle fire through 3ft of earth-filled sacks. Behind the trenches the flat land, torn with shells, goes straight back. Water gathers in great holes, stagnant ■and dirty In some localities pumps are at work. These trenches, with their weathered sandbags, have a dingy and forlorn appearance. The only bright spots in them were the faces of their occupants. The lino was capable of improvement, and several New Zeftlanders were already busy with that work. Others, periscope in hand' and rifle ready, were watching out for any Hun who in an unguarded moment might show his crown above the parapet. But there were many men in the trenches who up to this time had never seen a German. A few had l been shot by our snipers. One man was seeu to jump np and fall like a shot rabbit. Some of our men had been shot too. You cannot have a war with the losses all on one side. The dug-outs were comfortable, with wooden floors in them, and men were putting double blankets on the doors, the outer blanket soaked in some chemical as a . protection, against the most devilish of all the Hunuish inventions, asphyxiating gas. The men seemed happy to be in the firing line. They had no complaints about the food, and they were more than a match for the German snipers. The Ge>;nan sniper is a good shot, but he has not the quickness of the colonial.

On the way we passed a bit of trench that had been blown to bits a few week? before our men "took over" from an English battalion. The ground for some distance back of the trenches was pitteo with the cannonade. The raw earth lay aga-pe at the sky. Rome of the shell holes were half full of slimy water. In the older pocki marks the healing hand of nature was already clothing their circumference with grass and weeds and wild flowers. Obviously no man could have gone through that curtain of fire uninjured. ißut the Germans did not gel that trench, and are still in their own line.

In the front line there were more recent evidences of destruction. That ven morning the oviemy had put 43 shell. l into one small s'c-.-ti<ni of our tr-vich. Strangely enough not a. man was injured. *\\"e were alrvacly repairing the damage. .Hut in the daylight it wa--dangerous io walk pa si that bit of torn trciH-h. Later we had' our revenge for that bit "f work, as I shall show in an, other article.