ANZACS' PART

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16980, 17 April 1917, Page 6

ANZACS' PART

SHOCK TROOPS AND HOLDING TROOPS.

When tho Australian divisions join in tho hammering attacks upon tho German lines, tho. peculiar strain of their winter experiences must bo remembered to their credit (writes a London correspondent). They havo had the roughest of work and the roughest of hardships. Thoy have held hard sections of tho British line, and taken their part in tho ceaseless aggressive- tactics by which we increase German nervousness and appi-pJiensiveness. They have sustained tho floods and frosts of winter of almost; unparalleled severity. 'They havo stuck it out in conditions which grind with peculiar hardness on minds and bodies accustomed to freedom, sunshino, and variety. All this and .more the men havo borne with less complaint than would havo marked a bad day at tho races or a stormy ploughing season. Thoy have taken their work of soldiering to include as much manual toil and physical danger and monotony as can bo crowded into ovary day. They aro paying the price of their country's freedom ungrudgingly. But in mero justice to tho divisions it must now be pointed out that troops cannot bo first-class shook battalions and at tho samo time first-class holding battalions. Not long ago a section of our army went oyer the top on a moderately simplo expedition. Thoy were to take enemy trenches, boat off the counter-attacks, and consolidate. To tho Australian army of tho spi-ing or sranraior the task would havo been easy and soon over. But these men made mistakes. Thoy went forward bravely, lost men, but pressed the Germans bade. They stayed there for some hours. And then they oame back. There were errors in orders, inordinate difficulties in getting up supplies and reserves, and little apparent utility in holding tho new line. It was only another long step forward into slush and filth. But tho main fact is that they came back. That fact has made every brigadier wonder whether our men havo not been changed into holding troops. It stands to reason that we oannot expact dash and initiative in attack if wo make our men the working bees of the trenches. In the French army tho distinction between shook troops and trench" troops k clearly marked. This was one of old Joffre's rules. Tho French are unequalled m attack. But their attacking divisions are not their holding divisions. The shock divisions are taken out of the line and thoroughly rested before tho attack, and they take over their trenches again only a. few hours lx?foro the assault. The shook troops of Joffrc and Nivelle, their corps d'clite, are not dulled and warped bv the drudgery of trench building, and sappimr. One essential part of the French schc-mcs"is that these leaders in assault should not be jaded. They are freeh in body, eager in mind, and tuned to tho assault. British headquarters has never had sufficient troops to indulge in this form of nursing. Ever since wo got to France our insistent need has been for more men. At the height of tho Somme battle tho call was as urgent as during those days when a few divisions of British regular's were saving France and civilisation. It is said that we now have two million men in Franco—a much higher fi<niro than wo over had during 1916. I do°not speculate as to what G.H.Q. may now bo doing with his men —whether resting is possible or proceeding, or whether the British lommy, a stolid and patient stickler under any shellfire, requires nursing. Speculations can but help tho enemy, and all that need be said is that whatever our men do this year it must bo remembered that for long and weary months they have been diggers : and carriers, fighters and sentinels, with little respite and no long-spells of quiet. .There are still many' cold and self-suffi-cient English officers who regard the Australians-* as far beneath them and theirs— who grade all British things according to a rigid caste system, and all things not British as m a caste far below the lowest British. But even these will agree that our Australian divisions arc as good shock troops as havo been produced in this war; and, further, that as hewers and drawers, as men of' mettle and muscle for trench work, the Australian soldiers have done fully as well as others. It is an axiom that an Australian division leaves a trench system infinitely better than it was. ' Our men's trench work can be grouped into three periods or trench systems—north and south of Armentieres, the Ypres 'salient, and the Somme. The improvements made in each case were general and thorough. The,faces of each system were changed. New saps were dug, lines were strengthened, railways kid, dug-outs of a safe pattern made in plenty, draining completed, and even schemes of defence changed. In one case in particular the trench system was scarcely recognisable. What had been single lines of poor sandbags, with merely death-traps, became a consolidated system of many lines, and all was clean, bright, and workmanlike. I. am told that tho British General Staff recognises that tho Australians are the best trench-builders in the armies of the Empire, and this might well be so, for their work stands out in excelsis. The price has been constant drudgery. Battalions taken from the lino to rest nave gone up. again—perhaps walking two or three miles from the 'billets—as night working parties. Men have not slept at nights for weeks on end, working while it' was dark, and snatching their sleep whilst Fritz was busy. Our start' could not visit a trench during daytime, either without seeing a small party here or there, working in danger, but where observation was difficult, working stripped to the skin, despite the chances of. their glistening shoulders being seen by the enemy, working with spade, pick, and bar at trenches and draining systems. We have put down literally scores of miles of duckboard, which means building staves all along those miles to hold the duckboard off the ground. Men in tho first firing line have physical ease. It might almost be called a lazy life. I do not even assert that the majority of the men do anything like as much work as they do in normal times at home. .But, coupled with its monotony, its dangers, its hard sleep ing and feeding, and its crampedness, the work is found by us to be physically and mentally most" exacting. Tho trenches, to my mind, in France even more than in Gallipoli, will ever be places of stern physical endurance, not so much because of danger, though that is constant, and will invariably catch the neglectful; but because of their toil and crampedness, and lack of rest. To tho sad sights, the smells, the noise and shriek of missiles' you can become accustomed. But the strain of physique is with yon always. You can never lie up, forget it, walk freely with head high and lungs well filled. The red clay of the narrow prison is the poor background of a ceaseless battle, in which digging, mining, building have their claims upon muscle as soon as fighting is suspended. Water mtist bo carried painfully in tins, corrugated iron comes up on the heads of men, ammunition and all supplies are brought up with difficulty. Of course, at night time transport wagons go far forward toward the firing line. But even packhorses could not go through tho mud on the Somme. Everything there had to be carried 8000 yards by our men through knee-deep mud that mado strong men labour with weariness. When a battalion is relieved, billots aro as often as not found to be flooded or filled after a long march to them; and though tho feeding arrangements arc -wonderfully. well organised throughout France, if a fire cannot be lit there can he no hot soup or tea. It would be an insult to tho fino men .who havo gone through the 'summer and winter in France to suggest they flinch •from hardships or danger. No shelling deters them, no dangers of patrol work or wire-setting, or raiding or trench warfare affect them. They remain the happy, enduring warriors, always ready for what fun comes along, and full of song .an<] merriment when chance brings them freedom. But let it be well understood that they have had a long period of severe trench work as holding troops. Thoy went from the Somme to Ypres, where a great deal in trench construction and improvement was well and faithfully done,' despite constant German efforts to prevent it by artillery and trench-mortar fire. Then they came back to the Somme, where the offensive was petering out, and where their work was to hold a line of trenches, occo.sionally extending their ground, and building a ragged battled line into a modern trnneli system. To-day the Australian iine is bigger than ever, extending—as the Germans well know—deep into that sector of the Somme, glorious because of its French victories in October and November. .Wo aro for the present more than ever holding troops,

Perhaps a more generous recognition of the ■ value as shook troops,' and of their essential difference in composition and temperament from the stolid, phlegmatic British Tommy, would have brought other arrangements, and given every Australian brigadier a chance to bring his men well up _to_ tho mark for coming events. Perhaps it is not intended in futirre to use the Australians as first-line shook troops, keening them for the army of pursuit or the wedge after the initial si';"cessps. Tn Inter years we will dfyidc whether during this year of warfare in Franco they were trnderriobd and used to the fall But

m the meantime it is essential to consider their achievements in coming offensives in the light of their experiences during the long -winter.