ON "NO-MAN'S SEA."

Otago Witness, Issue 3309, 15 August 1917, Page 25

ON "NO-MAN'S SEA."

ROWING TO BATTLE IN FLANDERS. With tho Belgian Army in Flanders,, May 11. Boating to battle is one of the novelties of lighting on this part of the Western front where the Belgian and German lines are separated by miles of flooded land. Trench raids are almost unheard of hero. The only thing approximating to them are bombing expeditions carried out from skiffs which are paddled skilfully under cover of darkness to the enemy's Tines. "Just at the edge of the water in front of our trench." said a Belgian officer, '' we have two little "caches' where our two boats lie hidden, and when darkness has come we set out on patrol. Sometimes with padded oars, sometimes with punt poles —for in some places the water is very shallow, we creep towards the German lines. At any moment a star shell may give you away, and bullets spurting up the water around you or whistling overhead warn you that rowing about in No Man's Sea is not always a healthy game.

" But the crowning excitement conies when you meet a German patrol boat. Once when I was out with a sergeant and two nun. we heard the steady splash of a punt pole in the water coming slowly towards us. We took ofit the safety pins from our bombs and waited until they were almost on us. And then we let fly. "Look" —and he ro'lerl up the sleeve of his tunic to show a drop scar near his elbow —" I got this from a bit of one of our own bombs, so close did we let the Germans come. But not one of them could have escipetl, for at least three of our bombs dropped right into the boat, and there were great bits of woodwork drifting about next day.

" The strangest pact of it all is that the fellows in the trenches on both sides are frightened to fire for fear of hitting their own men. As a matter of fact all four of us were slightly hit in the rue. for home, but the Boches'never got home at all. "There's only ore oilier way of getting close to the German in the Hoodlands. At intervals there are raised roads running east and west between the wide-stretching lakes, unpleasant lit.le ribbons of land,

bordered by two lines of broken poplars, connecting us with tho enemy. '"And far out along tho roads are Belgian and German hidden • advanced posts. There, night and day, men lio in tho mud and listen, in ease anyone should be fool enough to attempt an attack along that road of death."