BATTLE OF THE SOMME

North Otago Times, Volume CIV, Issue 13662, 2 September 1916, Page 7

BATTLE OF THE SOMME

PRELIMINARY PHASES, TERRIFIC BOMBARDMENT BY GERMAN GUNS, FIERCE FIGHTING ON BOTH SIDES. DAZED GERMAN PRISONERS, (From Malcolm Eobd, Official War Correspondent with Now Zealand Forcoa). With the British in the Field, . ' . July 3. After careful preparation and' wonderful organisation behind the lines, a British offensive has been launched against. tho Germans in France. The French are pushing next to us north and south of the Somme. The Germans thought no doubt they had finished them at Verdun. The surprise was till the more effective. With a dash and a determination, for which they were ever famous, the splendid French troops hi this push! have been remarkably sue-. cessful and have won new laurels,

Organisation of lae Offensive. The scope of this combined offensive is as great as it is important. Apart from the fighting the traffic along the roads is in itself an amazing sight. Its coutrol is equally wonderful. Big' motor lorries pass and repass in long, columns. Motor-cars carrying staff officers (lash along the roads, Motorcyclists flash by. Great guns with motor tractors on caterpillar wheels crawl across the fields like Saurian monsters come to life .again. Ammunition columns advance toward the tiring line, and motor ambulances, their red crosses half hidden in a coating of diist, running smoothly and slowly, return laden with the human wreckage from the battlefields. High above the cornfields ugly "sausage" balloona strain at the thin ropes of steel that hold them captive; the observers, often sick with the continuous swaying motion, watching through their glasses-the slow swing of the battle pendulum down below. Higher still, the fast battle planes gleam in the bright sunshine, or, like dark birds of evil omen, remain for a time silhouetted against a silver :doud. In the night long columns of troops'-march along the dusty roads or leave the trail of a column of fours across the clover and wheat fields —a- trail' that remains visible for days. It is all very wonderful—amazing!

German Morale Shaken, But the most wonderful tiling of ;ill lms boon the bombardment of the (.termini lines. Day and night, without intermission, but with.varying degrees of intensity, it has gone on. In many places it lias blown the Gorman trenches to bits. It has changed, as if with a magician's wand, the already-battered buildings held by the German soldiery into heaps of red rubble. Jt has heaped ruin upon ruin until amidst the general jumble a man might well have difficulty in picking out the site of his own house*Aml what is more to the purpose, it has killed large numbers of Germans. I should doubt if in any phase of this war a greater number of shells lias been poured out in a given time along such an extended front. It has played such havoc • with the Gorman linos of communication that it was. with difficulty they gotfood and water.up to thcjiriiig. line. Wounded and unwounded German prisoners, many hundreds of whom we saw, had in their faces that grey scared look that tells its own tale of torments, of mind and of bodily fatigue . and shock endured. With a haunting remembrance of the orjleal, they said it was terrible, They were a mixed lotnot, of course, seen at their best—but amongst them were some line strapping fellows. Many admitted that Germany could not now win—the most they hoped for was a draw—but iu any case the war could .not last much longer. One thing was certain—namely, that their morale had been shaken. .Few there were who were not pleased to be prisoners, fewer still who, could I hey regain their liberty, would care to go back. ■ \

Continuous Explosions. Day and night we watched the bombardment from a vantage point that overlooked the battlefields between the Somnio and the Aucre. By day it was a spectacle of' clouds and smoke and dust—by night a scene of strange glowing lights and flashing illumination. And all the time the grand arpeggio of the guns. The intensity, of sound varied with the region from which one listened. ,The air was tremulous with the throbbing pulsations of hundreds of guns of different calibres. It was altogether different from the bombardments on Gal-

lipoli, whoro the guns of tuft ship*' boomed across the sea ami our own cannon reverberated' amongst the-liills and dales. Jt was dill'ercilt also froin the thunder of the New Zealand batteries at Amicntieres, where an intense bombardment crashes and echoes like a great,tntiuleutorm. Here in this open, gently rolling country it is not a thunder, but rather a continuous pulsation ot ! sound, beating so quickly upon, the oar that the beats become uncountable. And llii'i'e arc .'.; range variations in the waves of battle sounds according as they arc affected by configuration of. country. Currents and pools of stagnant air also play their incomprehensible parts. The booming of the bigger guns is said to have been heard in England! Here they are largely merged in, the gigantic, continuous pulsation. It is as if one were listening to the heart-beats of the world itself—lo the pulsing of a great troubled -heart, in which the rhythm was broken at uncertain intervals by the bursting of huge 15-inch howitzer shells and the explosions ■of great mines packed literally with tons of ammonal.. The volume of sound reaches its maximum of pitch when hundreds, of trench mortars all along the line begin to'hurl •the heavy explosive shells in graceful curves to fall with terrific bursts upon German trench and parapet and barbed wire entanglements. At last, after many months of weary waiting, tlie.enemy was getting back with compound in-, •tcicst a sample of his own devilish devices for the destruction of mankind.

Capturing "No Man's Land." At about 7.80 a.m., when our infantry attack was launched, when . the trench mortars ceased and the guns lift-' cd their fire, there was a considerable diminution of the great pulsation of sound to which our ears had become accustomed. Then came the cracking of rifle-fire and the-devilish tattoo, of the enemy machine-guns as our men crept over the parapets into'for what had been for so long No Man's' Land, but which in a few- minutes now became ours, These, their staccato bursts softened by distance-, came faintly through the sound of our own cannonade and the somewhitt uncertain and' hesitating' barrage of the enemy gunners, but to practised ears they were easily audible;. ■ The grass was wet with dew and the morning mists hung low in the valley and on the,slopes beyond where the d.eatli struggle was now*begun in real earnest. The smoke ninf dust of battle mingled with this haze, and blotted out the distant landscape. Gradually, as tho morning wore on, the visibility increased. And presently out of the thick haze we- cuiilil see slowly emerging the toppling golden Virgin of the .steeple of the church at Albert, bent at an angle by the German shelling and face down.wards, bill s'ill holding in outstretched hands the infant Christ. Appearing in this wise out of the -mist ami the smoke of battle the giant- figure still held up upon its bent girders',of iron seemed a mute protest- against the "kultur" of a cruel ami destroying nation. r

From that day until now the great attack has gono on, at times developing, into a series of battles. One would almost have thought that nothing would live through the hail of shell with which we battered the German trenches. Our own wounded, and officers' and men whom we afterwards saw on the actual battlefield, smilingly confirmed the stories that the German prisoners had told .\ us with haggard faces and still frightened eyes. Yet the pick and the shovel in patient, toiling hands are great and effective adjuncts to the bayonet and'the gun in modern warfare, and the enemy has used them to some purpose, Sheltering in their deep dug-outs, in trench and ruined village, ninny Gentians saved themselves and their machiiie-«;uns long .after 'ireiicir'and' pariipet. lui'd parades. ~ had become.'indistinguishable''the one from tiie other, From these machine gmis ami from the German shrapnel and. high explosive our gallant British soldiers were met in many places .with a withering lire that might have well dis- •' niaycd them, and that thinned their ranks-ami dotted the swad with gallant dead. In other instances the resistance mot with was feeble. A company in .• one place got into the front line 'with but a single casualty, and into the second trench with only three. Thcro were many gallant deeds done that day,, ■ and if there were a hundred eye-wit-nesses with the most .graphic pens instead of only, six or seven they would fail to do justice to the heroism of the "contemptible little army." Yesterday in company with a press officer and my colleague Captain Bean, .1 had a unique opportunity of. witnessing at close quarters a battle—indeed one might almost say two battles—in which our troops performed prodigies of volour. Within the great circle of gun-fire we saw tho splendid work of our gunners and watch* ed our men go forward to attack almost ' impossible situations with determined and unflinching heroism. It was ait opportunity that comes to a correspondent only too seldom in this war, -bujt.it enabled one to form a I rue estimate of. the valour of the British race. In a / subsequent article 1 shall endeavour to describe what we saw,