IN A HOT CORNER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17089, 22 August 1917, Page 8

IN A HOT CORNER

TENACITY OF' AUSTRALIAN GUNNERS. (From Mr 0. E. W Bean; Offioial Correspondent with the A.1.F.) British Headquarters, France August 5. * I mentioned previously some Australian artillery having been involved in a great battle on July 30, but only. yesterday heard what a splendid part that artillery played. The guns were ordered to advance at a stated time in accordance with plan. At the majority of places where the battle went as planned this advance was carried out smoothly and punctually. At one portion the Australian guns were in action in the new position within less than an hour after they eeased firing from the old. It so happened, however, that a couple of other brigades were behind the portion of the line where the chief trouble was met with. When the guns were due to advance the infantry were still held up by formidable opposition not far beyond the German front line system. The situation was obscure, but so far the artillery knew that the battle was proceeding according to programme here as elsewhere. At the exact moment up came the teams, the batteries were limbered up, and filed off at a walk, men and horses looking magnificent as they came down the slope, passing other batteries drawn up and waiting to join the column. As they advanced they came in view of some of the enemy's, positions at a considerable distance. Scattered shells began to drop round the teams without doing any harm. But when the leading batteries began to come oyer the ridge immediately behind the new positions, they came suddenly under observation of the enemy still holding portion of the heights beyond. Almost immediately shells began to drop more thickly. A 6 the news got round amongst a group of German batteries covering that part of the line, one after another turned their fire on to , the crest over which our batteries were firing. Then for the first time the column broke into, troop, coming with perfect steadiness through a tornado of shellfire. The leading batteries made their way through a maze of shell holes to the new positions, the drivers flogging and almost lifting the horses by an immense effort through deeply pitted grounds. At tnat moment the tail of the column was nlocked by a gun sagging into a shell hole. A 5.9 shell plunged fair into the midst of one of the waiting teams, killing and wounding every horse.

Not for a minute did the work falter. Those batteries which had already " downed " .trails continued steadily to pick up their task exactly where it had been Machine gun fire was hissing on to them in constant bursts from guns they could not see. The limbers had just moved off, and the 1 guns were in position, when thero was a whirr overhead, and a German aeroplane/ flying under low clouds, wheeled over them. They could see the pilot in his sgat and the bombs 'as he dropped them, one after another, over the batteries. But his journey was too hurried for good aiming. Every bomb fell wide. He then turned to his machine gun. Six times during the_ day German" machines amongst the whirling collection which circled low overhead fired on these gun crews with machine guns. Tho Australians rigged \ip a Lewis gun which they found in a crater and a Vickers gun left in trenches. These, with batmen, signallers, and spare men using rifles, were turned on to the attacking 'planes, whilst the battery continued its work. So thick and so low under the clouds were the machines that it seemed barely possible for them to avoid each other or to distinguish the enemy from themselves.

Through all this, under the fire of heavier shell as the day went on, the Australian batteries carried out every order which reached them all day long exactly as if on the practice ground. "I rather liked those first six hours," Gaid one of the men to me, "bettor than any other day in my life."