THE FRONT IN FRANCE

Otago Witness, Issue 3250, 28 June 1916, Page 29

THE FRONT IN FRANCE

ANZACS IN THE FIRING LINI

(From Malcolm Ross. Officii! C: rrcspoucLnt with the N.Z. Forces.)

NORTHERN FRANCE, Anzac Day. A visit to the firing line in Northern France impresses upon one the altered conditions under which our nun will have to light, as compared, with Gallipoli. '1 he transition is from an unfertile, hilly, unpopulated country to one of flat lands, intensely cultivated, and densely peopled. In Gallipoli, from almost any point in our circumscribed area, you obtained extensive views over land and sea. Here, if you wish a distant view, you must climb a tree or a church tower/ and the effort in either direction would be likely to prove a most imh--dtuy occupation. Even more than this change of scene and conditions, you are impusstd with the vastness of tlie ep.ratons and the almost diabolical scicntificncss of modern warfare as practised on the western front. As your car rattles over the "pave" you come to the conclusion that France is full of troops, and the endless lines of motor lorries that you pass indicate that no effort is spared to feed the army with the hundred and one things that are necessary to its success. You note with some amazement smmbers running beyond twenty thousand. You wonder still more when you are told that there are some forty thousand motor vans in this sector. In addition to all this, you meet many motor bicycles and motor cars, hurrying to and fro. The horse also is here, but 1)0 has been relegated to a comparatively unimportant position. Behind the lines are the railways, ami a wonderful system of tramways leading up to and rnnning parallel with the British and German lines. After the intense concentration at Anzac, where only a few hundred yards separated army corps and divisional headquarters, and even the head commands were under shell and rifle fire, the distances here seem greater almost than they are. Corps headquarters arc miles behind the lines. Divisional headquarters are miles in front, but still miles from the tr< nehes. Much patrol is needed to cat up these distances. Even from brigade headquarters you have to walk a few miles along the roads and through the saps before you reach the firing line. From the time you leave your car until you ret back" to it you get quite a lot of exercise. CULTIVATION CLOSE UP. The peasants, scorning danger, cultivate their fields well within the battle gone. Just now the woods in all this region where we have come to fight are bursting into leaf—a glorious sight in the warm sunshine. The ground is carpeted with wild flowers, which children gather, heedless of the sound of the guns. Old men ploughing and women harrowing the fields pursue their daily tasks with grave unconcern. France must be fed, and upon them and their children the duty lies. Right, up to within a mile or two of the firing line there is scarce, a bit of arable land that is not cultivated. And there is promise of an abundant harvest. The gathering of it may be a more difficult problem. We may be surf? that the patient genius of the French people will solve the problem. But one has already visions of aircraft sailing in the summer blue and dropping incendiary bombs in the ripening corn. That, however, is a game at which two can play, and with our stringent blockade Germany will bo the greater sufferer. In villages that have been badly battered the people have gone back and have reopened their little shops to sell to the soldiers. As we drive into one, two young children come down the road wheeling a barrow. In a field with the shells screeching overhead, and bursting well beyond in the land we hold, an old man with a white horse is unconcernedly ploughing his lonely furrow. It is such a strange sight that the Anzas in the trenches think he must be doing it to give the German gunners a lino on which to fire. Already there is a recrudescence of the spy mania that seized hold of our boys in the early days of Gallipoli. But the old man is undoubtedly iii-;t an ordinary peasant doing his bit in the world's greatest conflict. THE SHATTERED VILLAGES.

Closo up to the front we reached a village where a hundred shattered houses told their terrible tale of war. In all that villago there was scarce one pane of glass left whole. The red-tiled roofs and most of the brick walls had been either riddled or blown to bits, Shops, houses, churches—it was all the same. Piles of bricks and mortar lay on the floors, and from the debris the lares and penates of former denizens, rich and poor, protruded. An iron bedstead, smashed crockery, a black bowler hat, a -woman's skirt, children's toys, a broken eruciiix, were sad mementoes of the pleasant family life that had existed there but a lew months ago. Through the holed and tumbled walls of a ehop we were able to take, a short cut past a street corner. Thence the disused road along which \vc walked was pitted with great shell holes. Frequently it is the inanimate that presents the saddest picture in war. A deserted, broken house, an unused road, appeal to the imagination even more than a wounded man. Only a few milce beyond the village this road was busy with the tire-

loss traffic of war. Here it was a relin« quished melancholy way, with grass already sproutmg in the interstices of the " pave."At night they said it was swept by a Gorman machine gun. As we walked aiong It :i Mausi r bullet meowed over our heada and buried itself with a thud in the green field. A solitary steer was oatijia: Ins fill of the lush grass in the neglected meadow, \\ o passed a brewery, torn with shot and shell. Smoke was still coming from one oi its chimneys. "By jove, it'takes a lot to stop them working," said our guide. But we found the vats' empty. The old brewery was being used as a held dressing station. IN SAB AND TRENCH. A few hundred yards further and wo descended into the sap—a shallow, narrow wet, winding trench. It did not give ono a- pleasant feeling of safety, but the mud and tho dull water under the " duckboards" —a battened way with thin latticed iron to keep your feet from slipping—indicated clearly that while you ni gut build up you could not very well dig down, at least w:thout much pumping. Compared with our communication trenches on Gallipoli it did not appear to be well made but there we had dry ground to deal with! Working parties, however, were already trying to better this trench, scraping out the mud and slush from under the "lifted duck-boards.' Away down in the south we could seo two German sausage-shaped, captive balloons high in tho air, observing! V\ei also have our balloons, and no doubt in this flat country they do good work Half way up the trench wo found the battalion commander, in gum boots ane? a • iint:sh Warm," sitting in h-s du"out . A shell had burst in front of it. and had broken the little window pane They didn't get my o-arden though sa:d the colonel, directing our Raze through the broken pane, where we noticed a small box in which a few primroses were blooming. The colonel came with us to the firing-line. The trench was still wet and muddy. In places the "duck-boards" were up for repairs. The latticed iron on them had been worn through in places by the tramp of many feet. Tho trench had probably been m use for 18 months—so slow is progression in modern trench warfare Phis is called Safely Alley." said the colonel, adding senfcentiously "because it is the most unsafe place in the line." THE FIRING LINE. In the firing-line we found an Australian battalion already making itself at home. Everywhere there was mud or slush or water. In places behind the line the water hail gathered in green, slimy pooh?. Yet the dug-outs, or such as we* looked into, were fairly comfortable, and being abovethe level of the water, and boarded, were dry. Tho men in their steel casques were scarcely recognisable as the same soldiers that had fought at Anzac. They had painted their helmets with a coating "of the yellow trench clay, so that observers in tho German planes might not see them. Our men had already bo-en supplied with" gas helmets, and there were double flaps to the dug-out door to help to defeat one of the most devilish phases of modern warfare that the Bochc has invented. But gas attacks do not profit the enemy much in these days. The most recent helmets invented by the British seem to give an almost perfect immunity from gas attacks. The other day we saw an Anzac doctor wearing one of the new helmets enveloped in a cloud of gas liberated experimentally, and he came through it r|uite safely. Without the helmet he would have been dead in a few minutes. We have also secured an adequate protection against the use of lachrymatory shells and bombs. Our men had been several days in tho firing-line, and had not seen a single German. "Wo can hear them talking and singing," said one of our snipers, "but tho worst, of it is wo cannot understand what they say or sing." The German trenches are only 75 yards away. Tho trenches here were infested with rate. They have come over from the deserted villages in which there is no longer any food for them. "How do you kill them." we asked? "We don't kill them," was the reply. "If we did we should need a fatigue party to; bury them next morning." On another day we vi-ited a, different section of the trenches. In the communication trench there was an ugly gap where a high explosive shell had burst. Wfli passed a ruined monastery and broken; houses in the fields. If m Egypt it required the exertions of a Sisyphus to keep the sand-blown trenches clear, here, purely —at least in winter—it must need tho labours of a Hercules 1o keep the trenchea dry. But spring is already with us, and summer is at hand, so the lot of oiu; men is. after all. not altogether an unenviable one. In the woods the birds arc in full song. The cuekoo is here, and. any_ evening, yon can hear the song of the nightingale. It seems altogether out of keeping with the deep diapason of the guns.