WITH THE BRITISH ARMY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16537, 10 November 1915, Page 3

WITH THE BRITISH ARMY.

THE LUTE IN SUNSHINE

From H B. Gtjllett, Official Australian, Correspondent at British Headquarters in Franco.

Copyright reserved by the Crown. New Zealand rights secured by the Otago Daily Times.

The peasants are reaping their harvest ■within range of tho enemy's guns. Through the summer days and long after sunset you Beo the old men and boys and the women cutting the generous crops and struggling bravely with the heavy eheaves. Many use the sickles as their fathers did a thousand yfiars ago; others work with scythes; tho more favoured with reapers and binders. The season which has brought them so much personal anguish hae been kind .to ihoir crops, and the yield is one of the best for years. The unfenced landscape which was so bare and cheerless in the winter Jβ now rich and fair; plots of ripened wheat aro splashed with sparkling squares of sugar beet, and tho air is sweet with the scent of clover. As you motor swiftly towards the firing line you pass suddenly out of this ordered cultivation. You are within tho zone forbidden to even the heroic peasant. On both sides reaches an irregular strip of country a fow miles wide which has not been out of cultivation before perhaps since the French long ago first became farmers. In a single season Nature has worked a miracle of reclamation, and has demonstrated how soon given tho opportunity she ■would restore even old Europe to a. wilderness. The area is now a waste of self-sown wheat and oate, red clover and scarlet ooppies, docks, chickweed, and many other kinds of plant life. Despite the booming of guns and scream of shells this deserted territory has become the home of partridges v and hares, which are eyed covetously by sporting English officers. The birds of tho woods have moved to less troubled places, but great numbers,of duck and other wild fowl nave taken sanctuary upon a sweep of marshes between the French and Germans at a spot where tho lines aro a mile apart. THE DEADLY GUNNERS.

The country behind the lines but within range of the shells hae become more dan<>rous as the war progressed. The gunuors have their ranges adjusted to cover every cross road and house and other points of importance. You indicate a well-worn track leading across the flowered countryside. The guns are silent; the trenches are out of sight. "You may take it if you wish," eays the staff officer, "but I wouldn't send my worst enemy there, unless it was on duty." But during the summer months the general use of communicating teenches has made life behind fairly safe and tolerable. When in winter you advanced to the trenches above ground in the shelter of the night, you now traverse a mile or less of winding trench, and get poeps of the sky through an overhanging tangle of pretty weeds and grasses. With recollections of the hideous conditions last winter, you marvel at the light-hearted manner in ■which the troops regard the near return of another season of cold and rain and" interminable nights. Trench life in summer is disturbed by swarms of flies, and often the lice] are troublesome, but men who have lived for months up to their knees in freezing muck and , rubbed all day and night against sodden, dripping walls, look upon the evils of the -warm weather as trifles. The second winter will not, perhaps, be quite as horrible as the first, but still it will be extremely hard on the men. No ingenuity or labour can make life tolerable along thousands of miles of trenches cut frequently through low-lying soil, and where all work is carried on under the attention of the enemy. Bricks and timber have been freely used by both sides for flooring. Everything possible has been done towards keeping the communicating trenches open during the winter, dugouts have been greatly improved, and parapets strengthened. FRENCH CONCERN FOR,LIFE. The French and English have taught each other much in the art of making trenches. You never cease to wonder at the achievement of the French along this line. Apart altogether from their fighting they accomplished a physical miracle in establishing within a few weeks a safe line of entrenchmente more than 500 miles long. They excel in dugouts and communication trenchea. They built tens of thousands of ■big dugouts on the same design. Each lot of occupants has exercised its fancy at decoration, sometimes in simple woodwork, sometimes in little • beds of flowers. Their line of communication trenches would be creditable if their construction had been the •work of many years instead of a few harassed months.. There is in all a note jf

permanency which might be almost sinister and depressing. In every French village and town within range of the enemy's guns great caves have been excavated, and arrows direct, your flying footeteps when the first shell announces a renewal of the "hate." Once our men are clear of the trenches they are disposed to regard the risk and strain as temporarily over. They regard casualties behind the lines in a sporting way. Perhaps, too, the French have been. preparing for a longer stay in the trenches than we British expected. They had the war nearer to them, and they also had a higher opinion of the fighting and enduring qualities of the enemy. They have talked little of swarming across the Rhine and marching gaily into Berlin. They intend to reach' the Rhine, and they may reach Berlin, but they allow tune- for their task. TRENCHES CAN BE TOO SAFE. Dugouts vary in their resistance, and their occupants are under no illusion about the shells they won't resist. At first you might ask why every epare moment is not occupied in making all shelters as nearly shell proof as possible. Perhaps the reason Iβ that the higher commands have learned that the trench which is too safe has other disabilities. Already it has been clearly shown that the best men for an advance under fire are not those that have been for months in the shelter of the parapets. Their offensive qualities are reduced by the ugly tact that they know too much of the nsk upon the- No Man's Land between the lines. .They have become trench dwellers by in-

tuition. '-I feel that I am to live in the trenches all my life" an officer told me yesterday. 'I returned from short leavea few days ago, and tumbled in here with tJie feeling that I was coming back to my settled job, and it was not altogether unpleasant. And the soldier is influenced against always seeking more cover by being constantly reminded of the' sheer luck of this trench fighting. Men who have observed caution for months and survived many attacks in the open fall one day from a stray bullet or a splinter of shell. "Acts of God are of daily occurrence upon every P?a °L the lin ?- Tho victim might be a statf oflicer trotting along a quiet road miles away from the front line, or an old hand in the trenches who has for the thousandth time raised his head above the parapet. Each day the British soldier believes more in the inscrutable workings of fate. 'Men who have been 'here all through 'pray that the new Citizens' Army will bo used offensively. "Tour splendid fellows at the Dardanelles have shown us what new British troops can do" a brigadier said to me. THE HAPPY SOLDIER. _ Go into the trenches once, go twenty times, and the experience is similar. Today there might be some excitement and casualties from shells; , to-morrow on tho same ground all might be quite well. You Jook over the parapet or through a periscope or you fancy, and see, twenty or a hundred yarde away, or perhaps half a mile the crooked network of the enemy's trenches showing' red or white or brown, according to the nature of tho soil, against the late summer colouring of the weeds and grasses J-ne ground may be flat or undulating; the. trencn might be in a green wood slashed ■with shell fire, or in the midst of a wide stretch of cultivated land. Except for the grass and the leafage it was the same six months ago as it is to-day. The lines do not move They stand still and grow stronger; they seem to grow more and more permanent as time goes on. But you do not feel desperate or even gloomy about tL ♦ if cont . ra 7 y° u come out from t> a e k refreshe< :l, and confident, infected with the spirit of the men who have m hand the job of resistance and advance. Men seem to grow younger on this terrible work. Tho British army is young in vears and younger still in bearing. It j s a t heart

an army of boys; and all arc in perfect physical condition, <\\l are volunteers, all animated and sustained by the highest physical courage, all taking their new life in the trenches happily and carelessly, and yet all are homesick and yearning for the villages and towns across tho channel. They fight gladly and mightily to-day, and tomorrow they bury their dead and still their grief, and aro ready to fight as gladly the day after; Except that they look very tired, they are the same to meet after a heavy engagement and /.a bad chopping up as at any other time. They seem almost able to close up tho great gaps in their ranks and at once forget. They talk not at all of the issue at stake; their's is not a talking job. They sing cheap new songs to old tunes; most of the verse is "made up" in the trenches, and, like the old ballad, never written down. The jingo song and the washy sentimental song oftheSouth African war is rarely heard. You catch fragments like— ' You ehould hear the major shout Put those woodbines out. . . , or.

We can hear the Germans singing, We can hear the bullets pinging.

From a dugout I heard an old-fashioned fellow, with only one note in his register, begin dolorously to ' groan " Rule, Britannia"; and at once there,came a loud chorus of " Cut it." " Stow it"; and "What's gone wrong with the lad?" Their avoidance of personal or patriotic sentiment is absolute. They , seem to think rather of their own towns aiffi villages than of Britain as a whole; thoir parochialism is intense, strange as that may seem in a race of unparalleled Empire builders. They smoke incessantly ; without tobacco we should lose the war They work harder than any navvies. They shave regularly, and so you mies the air of paternal responsibility and gravity which there is about a lot of heavily bearded young French soldiers. They swear freely, but cleanly. While they would have it summer all the time, they tell you with much laughter of their adventures in tho swampy trenches of last winter. They would like the war to be over, but they are not at all depressed at-the thought that it might go on for years. Pass along near tea time and every young officer will beg you to share his special cake from home. Their sense of humour alone ensures them victory over the Bosche. The other night, at one of the variety shows behind the lines, at which most of the performers are professional entertainers who have taken to the trenches, a comedian began his patter with " You can't bluff me. I was with you when you ran away from Mons. I shared a horse with three or four of you." Officers and men laughed heartily. The recollection seemed' the best joke in the -world. We speculated as to how German officers would have taken such a, sally from a private.