KING WITH HIS ARMIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16372, 28 October 1916, Page 8

KING WITH HIS ARMIES.

VISIT TO BATTLEFIELDS. IN THE FORWARD TRENCHES DELIGHT OF THE SOLDIERS The King spent a week with his arrme: in the field in August, The essentis character of the visit, Mr. Philip Gibb wrote, was its informality, the absence c all ceremony, and it has been most ir treating to see the King chatting wit officers and men in the roads and in th fields, walking into the men's billets, am going about the lines without an escort It was in such a way that King Hal wen among his men before the battle of Agin court, and it is the best way. The King is quite fearless. I hav seen him standing on the edge of a grea shell-crater underneath the ghastly run of a fine old building which had beei shelled by long-range guns only four day, before his visit, and might atanymomen bo shelled again. People about him wen a little nervous for his safety, but hi lingered there as though there were m danger in the blue sky above him. ' Hi wandered about on the battlefield foi several hours and was eager to go righl • forward. Tho soldiers were astonished and glad to see him in such places. Al of them have used the same phrase aboul him: "It was very sporting of him." In the Wake of Victory. The King had a memorable experiperhaps the most remarkable during his reign. Ho went further than the edge of the battlefields, where thousand! of his troops are still fighting, and well out into that stretch of ground whicl bears upon every yard of it the trace oi recent battle and tho relics of those whe fought and fell. He went into the trenches they had left before thej scrambled over the parapets for thai great adventure, and then across to the German benches • which they captured, under shell fire and. machine-gur fire, in that great, irresistible tide of pas sionate endeavour which swept througl the iortress lines of the enemy, and, care less of all their losses, went on. Th< King went forward over the same ground . and stood at a point from which he coulc see many of those places whose name: will be written always in English hißtorj tney are written now upon the heart; of the many men and women whose sons »r«re Fricourt, Mametz, Contalrcaisoji, Montauban. King's Oar Held Up. I think he must have been interested in the jonraiy that followed after we left to visit a casualty clearing station some distance away. The roads were full of the traffio of .var, and the King's car had to halt many times in the swirl of it. Field guns »rd howitzers with all their limber swung past him, the gunners with their steel Dais strapped well down, jolting on the carnages, while the drivers urged on their hordes with a half an inch to spare between the axles of the gun wheels and the psnels of the King's car. The came a regiment of Manchester men on the mrxch, powdered with white dus. from head to foot, with sweat drippiny down the bronzed faces, with their steel hits on the back of their heads, with rifles Mid packs weighing heavily on ' this hot day in a blaze of sun. Watching a Big Shoot. The King saw the actual business of war with a heavy bombardment of the enemy's lines. It was from an observation coat, known to gunners as an O-Pip, in the Ypres salient. In a wide haft- . circle around the King stretched the great battle-ground, which since October of the v first year of war has been famous for " most terrible, most bloody, and moat heroic fighting. There was a "big shoot" in progress on the Wyghteehaete trenches, and before watching its general effect the King watched the work of some of our " heavies"—9.2's and 6in guns— and. went.down in the dug-out of one of the batteries. • .After spending some time with the bat- , tery/.tbe King went to the observation \ post and watched the bombardment of the enemy's trenches Over a short line ;it was terrific in intensity. The King '■'4 was intensely interested. When the time to leave had come and gone the Prince of .Wales spoke to the staff officers and 1 said that it would be a pity to go for some time longer as the King was so absorbed in the scene before him. . Cheers from Canadians. But at last the King; withdrew from the grim fascination of # this close view of war and went back again along roads crowded with Canadian troops, and through a Canadian camp, where the men rushed forward to him, cheering tumultuously. The ordered tumult of war, the splendours of our men, those guns of ours which never cease their fire, the devastation of the battlefields, the graves of the heroic dead, the patience of the wounded brought down from battle, and the devorfnL°;wu rt e L ver eoul out here to the Outy that has been given him. though it lead > to death, are the memories which the King takes with him. wi like ""•t?? B P' rit of S l6 men, which w^eaßhimnglightabouthimlsfe