BATTLEFIELDS REVISITED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18768, 23 January 1923, Page 8

BATTLEFIELDS REVISITED

VIMY KJDGE. ROUND A BOLT ROSSTGXOI. WOOD. AMIENS—THE TOWN OF GHOSTS. By T. J. Pkmbkhton. LONDON, November 30. There was naturally a certain tendency on tne part oi those who lought on the Sonuno or in the Salient to thing that their particular part of the line bore tne palm lor unpleasantness. Ji was, perhaps, lortunato that ones imagination was limited. A hundred yards or a thousand yards, as the case might be, of the battle front was sufficiently absorbing for anyone in the trenches. But even alter these years there is some tiling about Vimy Ridge which gives one a tremendous respect lor those whose duty it was to sit in its shadow and afterwards to lake it and hold it. To look from the original British trenches to those of the Germans on the edge of the ridge was not a matter of looking slightly skyward. It was comparable with looking at the top ot a church tower from the other side of ft street. And hero from a hundred feet above the enemy flung their oddments into the British lines below. It must have boon exceedingly unhealthy for those British and Canadian skygazers. There is a toad from Nouville cut diagonally up the precipitous face to the summit of the ridge, and Ulus one may climb the hundred feet to what was probably the most terrible battlefield in Die history of the world. But when the troops climbed that slope and gained a narrow ledge on top it was straight up a slippery, shell-pocked, bullet-swept face. It was one of those seemingly impossible things which men were called upon to do in those desperate days. The battlefield has long since been cleared of the debris of war, but no one has attempted to fill in the trenches As for the craters, they remain much as they were four years ago. Whereas the grass and the weeds have softened the shell-holes, the clay sides of these gigantic excavations have extended no hospitality' to the windborne seeds. This string of yawning abysses remains then to-day as a memorial of the most devilish form of warfare yet invented. Not that the platoons and companies that were blown heavenward in fragments over knew anything about their final elevation. It was the days and weeks of strain, when the car was ever alert to catch that faint “tap-tap” beneath the earth on which one lay or walked, which made life on this Vimy Ridge so mightily unpleasant. Men burrowed like earthworms, and their lives came to an end beneath (he earth. To-day (heir section of the trench might be intact, to-morrow a yawning chasm took its place. It is not, difficult to imagine all this to-day. Hie lines of trenches may be traced, the opposing saps which almost meet in what was No-Man’s Land, and the positions of Iho craters show how amazingly intimate the warfare must have been. A PATCH OK ENGLAND.

In the midst of the crater area there stands a wooden monument stayed with wire and mounted on ammunition boxes. It is to the memory of (hose of the 78th Battalion Canadians who fell in these parts. Avion, l.ievin, Angrees, Givewchy-en-Gohelie. the little town of Viniy itself, and Neuvillc are all rising out of their ashes and are not entirely unpicluresque from ft distance, with their red-roofed houses. At the crossroads at Thclus a small but striking monument has been erected in honour cf the Canadian Field Artillery, the Royal Garrison Artillery, and the .South African Artillery. It is a simple cross mounted on a pyramid of rough rod stone. Just beyond on the Lille-Arras road a little piece of England seems to have strayed. It is the cottage of an English gardener who has established a tearoom, and in the haft acre of ground attached he lias planted a lawn and made a beautiful garden such as one seldom sees in the villages of France. ARRAS. As for Arras, the busy life of the town has been resumed, but reconstruction is a long way from completion. In the main square, where hardly a building was left intact, work is still going on vigorously, mo frontal pillars all round the square are being re-erected, and the old style of architecture is being preserved. Doubtless, in a month or two, this main business locality will be restored. In the residential parts, however, there are very many houses in the same half-demolished condition iney were in at the close of the war. Especially is this so along the Place Victor Hugo, that once splendid avenue leading up to the Card du Nord. Not a church, of course, was left intact, but some, rf these are being rebuilt. The cathedral, as in all other towns, remains derelict. It will be many years, probably, before any effort will be made to restore these to their formfer grandeur. THE LADY OF BUCQUOY.

It was interesting to motor -pleasantly into tlie locality covered by Army Map yiieot 57D, N.li.. a mud-stained copy of which 1 carried with me. The mud brought back vivid recollections of the'liquid trenches held by the 37th Division in the locality of Rossignol Wood, with which New Zealanders were afterwards to become so 1 ami liar. Down the road from Ayette to Bucquov there was very little to remind one that this was a thrice-contested battlefield. Once having entered the long village street of Buoqnoy the indications of desolation were apparent, ja very one was busy, however, and the full population seems to have returned to find a home of some kind amongst the mins. Already half the cottagers have been restored. Having seen this village as a No Man’s Land and its eastern and western ends one of the worst of infernos it was possible to imagine, it brought back a strange feeling of intimacy which even the toiling villagers ootdd not- know, .there is one exception, if she still lives. With the advancing wave of German troops in 1918 the inhabitants, who had come back after the first German retirement, natural! v fled to lh e v again—a!! save ' one old woman hen (be enemy took the eastern part n| village in March of 1918 the opposing lorces shelled the outer edges of ihe village to powder. The centre of the village being No Man’s Land remained in comparative pence for some time, and here, beneath this canopy of screaming shells, hemmed in by a barrage at either end, the dear old Indy carried on her daily occupations as though all the world had gone mad and she alone were sane. Both German and Lnghsh soldiers, peeping over their trenches, had the disconcerting spectacle of a peaceful oiti/en hanging out her clothes and attendmg to her garden in the middle of No -Man s Land. In the end a British officer went by night, and, more by force thar persuasion, brought her back behind the hues. Buisieux-au-Mont used (6 be the village over the hill. Lor months it remained invisible to all but the airmen. But on quiet nights from the trenches about xtossignol Wood one could hear the rumble of the German transport there and the lllc fin vers. When in August , tyio, it became a visible objective, there was hale left of it but piles of bricks to-day it is a place of habitation, and the people are gradually wiping out the scars of war. On the road from Bucquoy to 1 uisieux one may see to the north-west the triangular patch of Biez Wood At the distance of a mile or two it looks green and unsha tiered, but doubtless a closer inspection would reveal the pitiful mishandling it received four years ago. SKRRE AND ITS LONELY ENGLISHMAN. Roadmenders and traction engines were busy along (he Serre road. Hereabout, the country remains in a derelict condition More than any part of the old British trout this area maintains its scars of war. No levelling-off has been done, and for some miles only the wild grass and the weeds have softened the shell-battered earth lhe old map gives Sene (site of) and it is just the site of Sorro still. Th e Suerrio Cemetery, whore many New Zealanders lie buried, is a cultivated spot, in the midst of a deserted country. Strange to say, however, one ex-British oflicer lias built himself a home here. He was one of the engineers who remained on the hatllefilds to destroy live ammunition. He married a French woman, and out of the debris of war he has built himself a tiny cafe. Ho has not prospered, and ho lives in the midst of in is desolation, a pathetic liguro of an English public school boy, (rving to live the life of a I'rent-ii peasant, and doing it badly. Other British soldiers ore to be met with in all parts of northern France, some working as mechanics, others as keepers of cafes. In a back street of Amiens, for instance, an Australian soldier keeps a little wine shop. He is not altogether unsuccessful. hut, like the. rest of thg men who look to themselves French wives, he finds that the women of France are too closely hound to their own country to lie persuaded to seek a new home across (he seas. A MIENS--THEN AND NOW. Amiens—the name conjures up m*,ny pleasant memories. For so long a town of British occupation, it gained a gaiety and splendour it had probably not possessed for centuries. It wa» the temporary Mecca

of the Soinnm troop?. The man in the trenches whose hopes of leave were far distant consoled himself with visions of a day spent in Amiens. One there, ho did himself well, and helped to enrich the traders of that town, whoso prices soared steauil.y up and up throughout the years of war. Nevertheless our allies, unconsciously or otherwise, imported something of the brilliance of Paris to this northern linso lor the delectation of the British troops. Its streets were cheerful by nignt, its hotels and cafes supplied a welcome change from the rations further east. Everywhere was life, action, military movement, splendid uniforms, throbbing staff ears, transport of every description, English nurses, smart salutes in the streets, sumptuous dining, hard drinking, and sometimes deep regrets, ft was a bright and pleasant, town u taken in moderation. Mo-day its glory has gone—gone completely. Ihe gVeal avenue leading up to the station, once crowded with guns. G.S. wagons, cars, and lorries has, perhaps, a single voiture creeping up its length. The crowds which paraded the main street on Saturday nig.u were of the orderly peasant type. i here was something drab and uninteresting about them all. By 10 o clock on Sunday night the streets were deserted. The impression loft upon one’s mind is that nothing will happen there until next war. It is a town of ghosts.