BATTLE SIDELIGHTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15884, 3 April 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

BATTLE SIDELIGHTS.

PRIVATE'S VARIED DUTIES.

DINNER THAT VANISHED.'

BATHS AT A BREWERY.

They have commandeered breweries at three points, and have sawn a lot of barrels in half to make baths, hired women to wash the clothes taken off, and so should havo a constant supply of clean clothes for the men. They heat the water in th» brewery furnaces; four men use the same water, so I should not like to be the fourth man. If this works properly they can 4ub 1000 to 1500 men per day, but) at present the water 6upply keeps running out, and' the supply of clean clothes keeps failing, as they cannot get them to dry in this rotten weather Major of the Engineers. NO EVENING DRESS. Near the stove in the dug-out are a few shelves for our alcohol, black polish, brushes, etc.; further our food, chocolate, tea, cakes, etc. The washstand is a rough piece of wood, with an old dish as a basin and an old pail as water-jug. One table, two chairs, a stool—three pieces of wood nailed together and a third one to cover the whole. Tho top one is broken; the three legs are not very strong; it does not matter. That is where I sit when every other day tho major comes to us for tea. Yes, tea—five o'clock tea. We send invitations on cards and in the corner we put: "No dancing; no evening-dress necessary."— French captain. i SOMEBODY'S HOME. In our trenches I saw a lovely old mahogany door being used as one side to a sentry-box, a very old book-case taken from a neighbouring dug-out used as one side to a dug-out; a beautiful old willow pattern bowl is being used for anything, and the peculiar French cups without handles strewn all over the place. Here in the chateau there are a pair of beautiful candlesticks of bronze and two fine bronze figures. It is tragic when ono realises that they belong to someone either dead or miles away. Lovely old chairs have been destroyed and others arc still here. One beautiful old Chippendale is in the corner as I write and its mate by my elbow. It is like a jumbled-up fairyland, all upsido down and unnatural.— From an Officer's Diary. TYPIST AND PRIVATE. A private in the Army .Service Corps writes :—" My duties are as varied as they are interesting. I am a shorthand-typist, an interpreter, a translator of foreign languages, and I sub-edit and print a weekly newspaper. My spare time is utilised for the pufpose of topography. In fact, Ido anything but shoot, and that may come later. It was decided to issue a summary of information periodically v to the troops composing our unit, and it was thought that ray previous acquaintance with such work might be of some slight use in this connection. So the work was handed over to me. At first it was called (by the major) the Daily Moil; then, as it did not come out with the promptitude of that journal, it was renamed the Weekly Despatch, and I am afraid we shall have to call it the Fortnightly Review next time, or even the Quarterly Review if things como to the worst." LINKS IN THE CHAIN. Every Army Service Corps man must feel the responsibility of the campaign on his shoulders. If ono man errs the general's plan may be ruined. If one link in tho chain is broken hundreds of troops may go without their grub, their endurance become undermined, and their moral lowered. You can imagine the sensations that pass through my brain as I ride at the head of my convoy with slow, regular pace at night, when the stillness is broken by an occasional bullet which cuts the air like the lash of a whip, or by the moan of a shell, which leaves us in doubt where it will burst. The moon hangs like a slico of melon in tho 6ky and the stars ahino down on those long, straight roads framed in poplar trees, and you imagine yourself in the laud of Arabian nights, when suddenly a waggon sinks in a muddy rut and reality returns with a vengeance, and you wonder if you will get your waggon out before the dawn.—Officer of the A. B.C.

A BIT OF INSIDE HISTORY. A doctor, who has been in France witli the R.AM.O. since the. early stages of the war, tells the interesting inside history nf his ten days' leave from the front. Ho was busily at work one day in a stationary hospital, when an orderly informed him that a young officer had just driven up in a motor-car and wanted a surgeon to como and see a wounded German officer who had just been brought in. In due course ho accompanied the young officer in his car and attended to the wounded German. On the return journey, during conversation, the question of leave cropped up. My friend said that he had been rattier unlucky in having had none since he came out in September. On returning to the hospital my friend was met by the officer commanding, who asked : " —and how did you enjoy your trip with the prince?" Then, as my friend seemed speechless with astonishment, ho added, laughing heartily : " It seems that you've been for a motor drive with the Prince of Wales without ever realising it!" Tlio sequel came the next day, when my doctor man was told that "by special request ho had been granted ten days' leave, to start immediately. "NEFER MIND, VAIT." Writing to his father at Rhyl a young man on duty in Togoland with" the. Togoland field force at Lome, says that tlio German colonists still believe firmly in ultimato victory for their arms. '"' The s.s. Henrietta Woormann, of the Wocrmann Line (German), one of the eight of that line captured in Dunla River, Cameroon?," he says, " came in hero on January 13 on her way home, commanded by a naval man with a prize crew. She flew the English and German flags at her 6tern, the Jack, of course, uppermost. This is the first German boat to come in pince the war. 1 chaffed the hotelkeeper if ho wasn't expecting some German mails from her. Ho always laughs when we try to pull his leg, and says : 'Nofer mind, rait," thinking, as all the Germans do here, that their time is coming very soon. They told the natives in the beginning that they would all be back again in six months; that time is nearly up now. This boat brought in 115 repatriated natives from Camoroons who had been banished from Togo as political prisoners. The Germans hung several native chiefs in Duala for refusing to fight or assist them during the war." WONDERFUL ESCAPE. A party of our officers had an extraordinary escape the other day, says "Eye-Witness" in his latest report from the front. They were on the point of sitting down to dinner in a dug-out when a bomb from a German trench mortar landed in their midst. When the smoko and dust of the explosion had cleared away the dinner had completely disappeared, but not a single man was hurt. An incident recently occurred on the left which serves to show tho nature of the present underground fighting. An old disused communication trench which led from one of our trenches towards those of the ' enemy had been blocked by us with a barbed-wire entanglement. One night a party of Germans cut tho entanglement. When this was discovered our men repaired it, and on the next night lay in 'wait in the hope that the enemy would come again. They were not disappointed. Six Germans camo cautiously up the narnow trench to tho entanglement, and were all shot dead at point-blank range. The endeavour to get the better of the enemy : in all sorts of little ways such as this makes up the daily life of tho soldier.