A SOLDIER'S LIFE IN FRANCE

Otago Witness, Issue 3244, 17 May 1916, Page 52

A SOLDIER'S LIFE IN FRANCE

TRENCH-MAKING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. (From Ode Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 25. Mr Frank Hayter (South Canterbury) spent ten months in France, with King Edward's Horso. Lately I was able to send out to Now Zealand some of his experiences connected with the early landing; and now I have seen some further notes which he wrote to a friend. As these contain numerous fragments of interesting reading, I do not hesitate to make some extracts. Ho doesn't seem much to like some of thy old French farmhouses, with their dilapidated barns, and with their living rooms, cowsheds, and stables all facing on to a yard containing the inevitable manure pit. But in spite of this horrible arrangement he found the inhabitants healthy and their living apartments very dean and neat. PURIFICATION Many times it has boon said that this is a war of petrol and big guns, and Mr Hayter docs not dispute this commonly made statement, but something olso apparently will linger longer in his memory, for ho writes: " I think the hateful smell and the still more hateful taste of chloride of lime will leave a more lasting impression on my mind than either, and in life chloride of lime will always recall the most gruesome and il'ie most nnhuroio side of war. Tt got into one's system through the drinking water, and by its hundred unpleasant associations it got into one's very soul. Medical and sanitary orderlies had been instructed to use it freely, and they obeyed these orders with zest. Over everything—offensive or otherwise —they sprinkled it, with the lavish hand of a Tommy putting his soul into his work. Drinking water was ' purified' with it until even tea became an impossibility, and the only refuge was in washy French beer or in " vin ordinaire,' —very ordinaly ! However, we survived these iniquities and even kept healthy under them, and after a time the proportion of chloride of lime to a pint of drinking water was considerably reduced. And the medical and sanitary orderlies got warwise and wont about their duties in a manner less demonstrative. A favourite remark of one of these enthusiasts was ' Nothin ' like plenty of lime to keep the germs down,' to which I invariably replied, 'I don't know anything liko too much of it either, for keeping anything down, except, perhaps, your last meal.'' UNDER FIRE. Some ton clays after arrival in France, the K.E.H. men were ordered to dig some second line trenches at a place two or three miles beyond the Belgian border, and about five or six miles from camp. The work had to bo done at night, as tho position was in sight of the German linos. "The first night we got up under the shelter of a. hill and tied our horses to a hedge, just after dark. Then we formed up on tho road ready for marching to the place where we were to work, about a mile further on. Between the field where we put the horses and the road there was a muddy ditch, and I remember half of us went up to our knees in the slime getting across. Soon we were all ready and marched off, getting the order ' Smokes out' as wo got near the brow of the hill. We were still a good way from the enemy lines, but we had to bo careful not to advertise our presence, as we were well within thg. range of the field guns. The limbers had moved on down to the bottom of the valley where there was an advanced dressing station in a ruined farm house, and eventually we caught them up, and each man took a pick or a shovel. Then we moved on along a corduroy track which led to the bottom of a straight road leading up the rise on tho other side of the valley. Both the road down to the dressing station and the one up the other slope of the valley were lined with tall, straight trees, all more or less scarred by shell fire, and hero and there one blown down altogether. We came to hate those long, monotonous avenues with their trees rising like ghostly sentinels into tho blackness of the night. "We turned off the road past tho dressing station into a field, and dug a line of trenches diagonally across the field to another ruined farm house, near the top of the far ridge. Tho ground was torn and scarred with many shell holes, which were filled with water from the recent rain, and the ground was sticky and very heavy to work. 'Occasionally flare lights from the trenches would cast an unhealthy light over the whole scene, and we could hear bullets from the German trenches whistling uncomfortably low over our heads or zipping into the tree trunks behind us. LONGING TO HIT BACK. "The next night we went up over the far ridge, beyond a cross road 'where there had once' been a village. Now there were only one or two bare walls standing, and the skeleton of a roof to which a few tiles still hung tenaciously. From the top of the rise we overlooked the front-line trenches, less than 300 yards in front of us, and stretching away down over the Douve below Messines. We thought we had come to the end of the earth there, and we were exposed to all the high shots meant for our trenches. The flares lit the place like day, but in most places we were partly screened from sight by a hedge which had once been a farmer's pride. Here bullets thumped into the earth at our feet or whistled sharply past our heads into the night beyond, and it irritated us intensely to think that we could not hit back. But luck was with us and we never had more than one casualty a night for the eight or ten nights we were there —though that one came with unfailing regularity. Wo dug and drained and revetted and were shot at, and when we had finished the enemy started to work, and systematically blew tho whole lot flat again. At least I was told so. Sometimes it° rained, and we would get soaked and caked with clay, and were never sorry to go stumbling and slipping down the valley again, past the dressing station and across the hill to whero our horses awaited us. Those ghostly avenues were left behind, and we oulcl smoke again if anyone had any matches and had kept thom dry. But we still had the ride home. REST AT LENGTH. " Anyone who has lived and worked in tho open will agree that a ride home in the dark, even if it is raining and you are dog tired, is a thing you can look back on with pleasure But if you are riding near the tail-end of a column of half-sections,

and the pace is a jumble of interminable jogs and unexpected checks, it is another matter entirely. Thoso rides were a nightmare, that seemed to drag out till the crack of doom, and the flare of a match as a man lit another pipe would reveal features set in hopeless resignation. We would get back to camp as dawn began to lift the mantle of darkness from tho eastern horizon, and after the horses had been offsnddled and rubbed down we would roll ourselves in our blankets and forget we had ever had a caro in the world."