THE ANZACS IN FRANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16267, 28 June 1916, Page 8

THE ANZACS IN FRANCE.

CONTRAST TO GALLIPOT.

TROOPS IN FIRING -LINE.

TENSION NOT AS GREAT.

COMFORTS AND DISCOMFORTS.

(By Commonwealth. War Correspondent.— Copyright.)

Bbitish Headquarters, April 25. The cottage door is open to the night, he soft air of a beautiful evening allow-i ing on a glorious day brushes past one into the room. As I stand here the nightingale from a neighbouring garden is piling his long, exquisite repeated note till the air seems full of it. Far over the horizon is an incessant flicker like summer lightning, very faint, but quite continuous. Under the nightingale's note comes always a dull rumble, throbbing and bumping occasionally, but quite seldom quite ceasing. Someone is getting 'it heavily down thereit is not our Australians I think I know their direction. it is just such a glorious day as this one has been, one year ago. when this corps of untried soldiers suddenly rushed! into the nightmare of a desperate fight. At this moment of the night the rattle of rifle fire was incessant all round the hills. Men were digging and firing and digging M a dream which had continued since early dawn and had s to continue for two more days and nights before there was the first chance of rest. Thev -were old so diers within 24 hours, as "their leader told them in an order which was circulated at the time. Only a sprinkling of the men who were there are in the Anzac units to-day. But they are the officers and non-commissioned officers, and that means a great deal. lhere is much that is different from m ft The rain has been heavier in March than for 35 years, and April, until yesterday, seemed also as bad. the trenches are made passable by being floored with a wooden pathway which runs on underneath which runs the gutter of water and mud which is the real floor of the trench. The actual firing trenches and the due orate are mostly dry by comparison, except where the accumulated task of draining them has been gaining cm seme regiment which has been holding them, and the rear of the line is a morass of foul-smell-ing clay. v Trench - Making Difficulties. Jn l n i ir^ir < , nover reall y cached us in balhroli though we might possibly have found the trenches -falling in upon us in the rains < of winter if we had stayed. The trenches in France are full of traces of old dug-outs and moulding. sandbags, ,collapsed through rain m the dim past before the timbering of all workings was looked on as a necessity.. In Anzac we never had the timber for all this and one doubts if we ever could have had & had we stayed. Ihe soil there wy dry and held well and the trenches were deep and very elaborate to a degree which one has not yet seen approached m France. There mav be some parts of the line where such trenches are possible and where they exkt, but I have not seen them. It must be remembered that in France there are stretches of line where it is impossible to dig a trench at all in winter, because you meet water as soon as you scratch the surface, and therefore both our line and the Germans are a breastwork built up instead of a trench dug out. The curious thing is that in the trenches you scarcely realise the difference. Your outlook there is bounded in either case bv two muddy walls over which you cannot wisely put your* head in the davliVht v„„ see no more of the country than you would in a city street. Trench life is always a city life. '

Seldom See the Enemy. • ~.t rench life is the same as it was in Gallipoli, except that in any part which 1 have seen the tension is nothing like so great. It is not as though you were hanging on to the edge of a valley by your finger nails and had to steal every yard that you could in order to have room to build up a second line and, if possible, a third line beyond that. Here both yon and the enemy have scores of miles behind you and two or three hundred yards more or less makes no difference worth mentioning. ~ F , OI !. th i* reason you would almost say that the German line in this country was asleep compared with the line we used to know. The other day, chancing to look into a trench-periscope, I happened for a moment to see the top of a dark object moving along half-hidden by the opposing parapet. Some earth was being thrown up over the breastwork just there, and probably the man had to stoop round the work which was going on. It was the first and only time I have seen a German in. his own linesSniping With Field-guns. The German here really does his sniping much more with his field-gun than with his rifle. They do use the rifles, and they are good shots, but slow. With the fieldgun they fire at any small body of men behind the lines. Half a dozen are quite enough, if they see them. The German gives you the nripression of being a keener observer than the Turk. The hills and trees behind his lines are generally within view of you over miles of your own country, though you scarcely realise it at first, and they are full of eyes- Also, everv fine day brings out his balloons, like a crop of fat grubs—and our own. In Gallipoli, our ships had the only balloons—the Turks had all the hilltops. The aeroplane here affords so great a difference in the obvious conditions of the fight that he deserves an - article to himself. But of all the differences, by far the greatest is that our troops here have a beautiful country and a civilised, en lightened population at the back of them, which they are defending against the invading enemy, whom they have always hoped to meet. Other Conditions Compared. j As we were entering a communicationtrench, we noticed four or five British soldiers walking across the open from a cottage. The officer with me asked them what they were doing. " We've just been to the inn there," they said. " Yes; the people of the house are still living in it," the officer remarked. In Gallipoli there were brigade headquarters in the actual fire trenches. From the headquarters of the division of the corps you could reach the line in ten minutes' hard walking any time. It is a Sabbath day's journey here. Nearly the whole of the army, except the troops in the actual firing-line, lives in a country which is populated by its normal inhabitants. And wherein lies the greatest change of all—the troops in the trenches themselves can be brought back every few days into more or less normal country, and have always the prospect bef6re them at the end of a few months of a rest in surroundings that are completely free from shell or rifle fire, and within reach of village _ shops and the normal comforts of civilisation. And, throwing the weather and wet trenches and the rest all in, that difference more than makes up for all of them.