INTO THE WAR ZONE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17104, 8 September 1917, Page 11

INTO THE WAR ZONE

A FRENCH GRAVEYARD

NOTRE DAME AND VIMY.

(By Our London Correspondent.)

/ June. Daylight shows how complete has boon tho transformation mado by tho last two years of war. After an early breakfast wo start at full speed, in the Vauxhalls which experience has brought triumphantly to the fore eastward towards tho line.

It' is still for the most part tho quiet, rural Franco of pre-war days, with its old women tending- its biddable cattle and wending its well-tilled fields. Ono marvels today how they have managed to find tho labour to sow every corner and nook, just as they used to do in peace time. When Zola divided life into chapters and called one of them " Agricole," ho said something renl about; Franco, whoso very fields to-day seemed determined on a harvest of victory. One thinks irresistibly of the French infantry as the French wheat, unprotected by any hedges, stands erect, clean and firm in a wind which is blowing with, some vigour across these high uplands. Incidentally, it is a comfortable thing to feel how our own women, not accustomed, as tho French, to field work, have al9o_ stepped cheerfully • and uncomplainingly into tho breach to do the work of men.

So much is pristine France. And it is pristipe France, too;, the long, flat, downy vista eastward, with the assorted and mathematical plantations and tho strange mixture of English country lanee and straight Roman roads, unhedged, but thinly lined by severely-trimmed pollards or poplars or limes. We meet the great war first in the larger towns and villages, where North Country traffic police wave us hero and there with spacious hands and well-remem-bered accents; where children and young people, epe-.k English as they never did before, and drink tea as they ncrvor knew how to beforo; where the quaint little shop windows have almost stopped whispering "patisserie" and " charcuterio" and " epicarie " to shout " afternoon tea " and " fish and chips" to tho Tommies overrunning tho landi THE TRAFFIC MIRACLE. We see groups of small, brown Portuguese ■ soldiers standing beforo their billets arid feeling to-day as wo felt in New Zealand late in 1899, when Sergeant Goirrley and Trooper Connell were killed—the first blood of our sacrifice for something wider than our own fields. Wo see villages and towns altogether occupied by well-b-shaved Tommies and Jocks and Taffies. We see strange, unexplained detachments of technical troops quartered here, there, and everywhere, with perhaps only a single air wire, difficult to discern, connecting them with the great machine of tho war. But tho most significant development of the last two years in France is that 'of light railways. There is no need to say they are everywhere, because a railway ca.n do so much easily and less noisily the work of many roads. Tho French State railways go oh as beforo at almost tho same painful rate for goods traffic; yet they are doing a very considerable part of the work, especially in the carrying of personnel. The light lines, on tho other hand, have mado possible what might be called a distributed concentration of supplies and munitions. Instead of piling up hugo dumps at targets for Hun planes it is now passible to sow tho countryside for many miles back with r-osorves which are scarcely visible from the air, which could not- possibly bo destroyed in toto, and which can be rushed to the point of consumption at- a moment's notice. Nevertheless, I should say tho road traffic is many times greater than before. The same long lines of motor wagons appear as before, and we know they are tearing to and fro n»t on one road, but on many. They have developed a good deal in their company s'gns and devices, which seem to be left to the sweet conception of the A.S.C. themselves, though evidently there is enough official control to prevent duplication. Only hero and there in all this multitude of vehicles does orio meet a French motor, for the French have now handed over their northern departments with complete trust and frankness to the British armies. NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE.

It is a eudden transition from the agricultural peace and tho industrial order of the area immediately behind the lines to the brooding devastation of the Notre Dame de Lorette and its surroundings. This is war itself; the vest is mere preparation. Ablain St. Nazaire was onco a pretty township with ono of those beautiful old churches common to tho north-east of France. Some of tho church tower still stands, and birds twitter in and out of the crevices in which they have built their nests. But the village 'itself is pounded to ruins long since, and nettles and other weeds of waste places fire growing vigorously through the mortar-heaps. This is the gateway to one of tho most terrible graveyards of French heroes. Notre Dame do Lorette, upon which in dead alone France lost 75,000 lives, was tho bastion, overlooking tho western end of the coalfields of Lille and Lens, which enabled France lo save ft portion of them for her own aid. When the armies flung north in the mad rush from theAiane, the French got astride the Notre Dame, with the wood , of Bouvigny at thtir back, and hung liko limpets. The Germans also invaded the eastern shoulder of tho ridge, and for months the trenches faced each other. Tlio position was a crucial one, and every, available German gun devastated the -unconquorabls French trenches. It was tho Boscho machine guns, playing on every attempt to debouch, that took tho awful toll of French lives. To-day theehell holes are mostly grown over with spring flowers, bnt. at every step one stumbles on the jnarks of the struggle— discarded ammunition, rusted , arms, rotted clothing, empty food tins, and, alas! human bones and skulls, too often tho relics of our heroic allies. With her own invincible strength France at length/ swept the enemy off the Lorette slowly and painfully through tho marshes of Souc , -*?: and up the opposing ritljre of Virny. All through the winter of 1915, French and German soldiers fought for the gravestones of Souchez Cemetery. By the by, tho growing army of~Brife«n took over this section of lino. Some of tho meet intexMtittjj of the late 'Captain Alan MaoDougall's letters tell of his imroaressione when he came here from the drab fhvtnees of the briokfields of La and Vermellea. Through what w«s left of the wood of Bottvigny (now only a few ban* and shuttered stabs such as one sees where- a, fire has gone through a Now Zf>alar>d swamp 'bush) tho British artillery ajtlvajnced to their new positions on tho Notre. Dame. First the French dugouts wcro occupied,, then the German, as mile by mile tho guns advanced in tho inexorable duel with the Hun artillery on Vimy and berond. Therft R.rc the old telephone ptaisone, fully wired, that both Frfnoh and EncrMi guimfis havo ueod. As njuoh as possible tho adYttnoTng , English hare covered up the tragic traeps of France's stroajffle, hot it is not much. Trenches liave bo*n filled in as tire mojt honourable- graves of the defenders, but there will bo year.? of labour to inter nil tho remains and restore the Notre Dn-me to what it once was.

THE CARRYING OF VIMY.

All down the eastern slope of Notre Dame warethesiaoeeeeivo lines of German trrnchee, methodically and accurately wired with the rusted barl>cd wire which our sweet-natured enemy affects. Some had boon held; others had evidently been abandoned unused when the German resistanco suddenly gave Way, and they tnmbled bac-k across the valle-y to the slopes of Vimy. Notre Dame was a battlefield of 1915. Vimy belongs to IGI7, with all that that means. Before thf- Canadians went over the top ft couple of months ago to storm this fortress insraed British guns standing almost wheel to wheel hammftrwi for a solid week one s-ma.ll n,rea fonr mile* long and one milo brrad. It was the key of the position, and the Hun had built tier after tier of trenches, concreted and sand-bagged and impregnable to any infantry assault. When the bombardment was over even tho lines of the trenches could not be disoornod. How thorough it was is evident from the fact that to-day thero is an unexploded shell lying on every square yard of the hillside, and bridlo-pathi for walking in single file had to bo constructed across tho shell-torn eaddle. There is not a blade of vegetation on the whole of tbs Vimy Ridgo. jlie black and white poles of tho German engineers now carry the British telephone wires to the front and beyond, and the tapes of tho British engineer aro laid for now mil 1 - tary roads to feed now advances towards the Rhine.

Tlie uj'he-uval In a revelation. Over tho wlioli , a,Tf>a tho white subsoil is thrown up to the (surface. Where long rows of dugouts had been cwlnicted ontv tin occasional aperture is visible. Thousands of ..ir-r----mans were buried in 'their caverns without; ever Boeing an enemy. Any attempt to w boucli reinforcements across the saddle from Givenchy en Gohcllo was impossible in face of tho carefully placed machine guns of the British at the foot of Notre Dnme. With swell a power of artillery ono won'.: think «nv pos-!ilil2 position could be captured, a.id it 'is -luite a si;n)i'i£<> to read, on a plain white cross over a neatly-kept gravo in this tangle of shell-holes and ohalk, that Lancecorporal L. W. Kirkland was killed in action here on April 32. Yet how stubbornly tho

Hun fought! It was three or four day* from the first infantry wavo going forward before tho position was finally onw. Onco on top of Vimy you sco what it all moans. It commands tho roads to Arrm on the south, and to Lens 6n tlio north. Walking doun tiio fitiM'-vard 1 slopo we could etc the onemy moving about in Lons, while his shell* wont overhead searching for our i atterins. Tho Lens area i;v now in our hands what ono Ypros s.'iliont hrfo been ';o tho Germans thi»,o long yoara. Vi\> can give them unrequited hell v/hen we liko; that is to say, when more important objects are lacking.