WHAT ONE SEES IN A BATTLE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3168, 2 December 1914, Page 75

WHAT ONE SEES IN A BATTLE.

REALISTIC DESCRIPTION. By H. Hamilton Fyfe, in the Daily Mail. A French painter of war pictures has described a modern battle as “ a landscape with puffs of smoke.” That is not merely an epigram; it is a description which all who have watched battles Avill admit to be very often exact. Very often the eye can see nothing unusual in the landscape except those little white cloud-balls far off which show where shells are bursting. Even with a good glass the field must be studied very intently before any further signs of battle reveal themselves. The enemy’s guns are hidden. They may be over the brow of that range of low hills or they may be screened by those woodlands along the river. Probably our own side’s guns are out of sight, too. The troops are snug in their trenches—unless it is wet, poor beggars; when “snug” is the wrong word ! Now and again you may see lines of what seem to be ants in movement. Or perhaps there is a sudden scurry of hundreds of black dots on hillsides, as if you had poked up the antheap with a stick. But of what, I am sure, is still the popular idea of a battle you can find no trace. The popular idea is that vast bodies of troops march against one another, that the batteries on either side mow down the opposing ranks as they come on, but that nothing can stop them until they are within rifle-shot of one another; that they then fire upon one another until they have exhausted either their cartridges or their Eatience, and finally mingle in a wild and-to-hand scrimmage all along the line, infantry and cavalry all mixed up together, the end being that one army retires beaten while the general of the other army announces that he has won. I quite agree that this would be a much more sporting kind of engagement than the actual thing. But war is not sport any longer; it is science. It is_ a matter of highly technical studies and ingenious, costly instruments. Successful generals are no longer dashing soldiers; they are either spectacled, professorial, bookish persons, or men skilled in organising, who, if they had not happened into the army, would have planned steamship “combines” or founded grocery “stores.” I have touched upon the scientific machinery aspect of war, because it explains why so little can be seen of a modern battle. Success goes not to the bravest, but to those who have the better machinery and can the better hide. When there is an exciting breast-to-breast struggle no one but those who are fighting can be near enough to know anything about it. I have with my field-glass searched sections of this immense battlefield stretching diagonally right across France. I have stood by batteries in action. I have crouched in trenches. I have even seen and spoken to German soldiers, which is more than any but a few of the combatants have done. But 1 cannot find any description of the actual battle-front to better that of the French painter—“ a landscape -with puffs of smoke.” Behind the actual front, however, behind the firing line, there is a great deal to he seen. Here, behind the scenes, as it were, yon realise the enormous complications of the machinery which wins battles and the need for having it as near perfection as possible. You may have the best guns in the world, but they are useless if you lack horses to drag them. Your soldiers may be the most courageous and most aptly trained, but unless you feed them regularly and well, unless you give them rest, they will fail you. Further than this, all movements must be timed exactly, all routes must be carefully planned. You must not have two regiments—one advancing, one retiring,—both trying to use the same road. Come, then, behind the scenes. We have just been watching the gunners and spying over an expanse of flatfish country with low hills in the distance—the hill where the enemy is. We were on high land, too. Now we drop down on the other side of it, the side away from the battle. At once we are among the performers who are awaiting their turn to appear. Here close by, to begin with, is a big group of artillery horses, all standing quiet while their batteries are in action. A little farther on we come to a long ammunition column waiting by the roadside, waggon after waggon packed with shells; they seem endless. Then a village full of soldiers—soldiers strolling about, soldiers in the doors of the houses, soldiers picking apples, any number of soldiers asleep. There is one writing a letter on a flat stone. There are several washing their clothes in the stream. There are three playing cards. In the shade of a high wall one man is shaving another, while n third, who has just been shaved, is washing his head in a bucket. There are actually two or three angling. The passion of Frenchmen for the art miscalled gentle is amazing. I believe if the Last Trump sounded at ten and the Last Judgment were timed for noon that many of them would spend the interval fishing in the nearest stream Again we go on, showing our pass to the sentry at the end of the village. Of course, no one is allowed in the battle-zone without a pass, and they are very hard to get. We go over a saddle between two hills, and here, as we run down, we come upon what looks at first like a horse fair. In a big meadow' bordered bv a stream there are hundreds of horses. This is where reserves of artillery are encamped. Much further back are. villages occupied In’ tke infantry reserves, and by the cavalry who have at this stage nothing to do. Their work is to peer and feel about beforehand so as to let the general know where the enemy are, and afterwards either tq chase the fleeing foe or to spread out a screen to protect a retreat by their own side Now we meet another very long column of waggons—all motor waggons these. At

a certain point they halt and separate. Some are lull of meat, whole carcases of sheep and oxen. Some are packed with round, flat loaves of bread nearly 2ft across. They are taking the troops their rations. Savoury messes will soon be sending up fragrant steam from hundred of cookingpots over camp-fires. There is, by the way, no “encamping’ for the French army in the strict sense. They do not carry tents; at all events, 1 have not come across any. After dark I have seen in the shine of the motor head-lights men sleeping along the roadside by the thousand, or against stocks of wheat in stubble fields. After dark, too, you see the tired men coming from the trenches, when the fresh troops, those whom we saw in the village, have gone forward to creep into their nlaces. And it is at this hour—the hour when in ordinary times men cease from their labour and go to their homes,—that the pity and waste of war smite upon the imagination with most poignant force. A fight warms the blood, brings out all the red corpuscle qualities. But there is nothing to warm or stir a man who is taking up his position in a trench at nightfall with the knowledge that the enemy will probably make an attack (it is his favourite practice) just before dawn, when vitality is at its lowest ebb. It is now that there is most to see of the battle. Flashes are frequent away over those farther hills. Burning stacks or houses patch the darkness with crimson. In the encampments the fires blaze up cheerfully. But I have lost the zest of it.