BATTLEFIELDS REVISITED

Otago Witness, Issue 3594, 30 January 1923, Page 24

BATTLEFIELDS REVISITED

VIMY RIDGE. ROUND ABOUT ROSSIGNOL WOOD. AMIENS—THE TOWN OF GHOSTS.

By

T. J. Pemberton.

LONDON, November 30. Here was naturally a certain tendency on the part of those who fought on the Somme or in the Calient to think that their particular part of the line bore the palm for unpleasantness. It was, perhaps, fortunate that one’s imagination was limited. A hundred yards or a thousand yards, as the ease might be, of the battle front was sufficiently absorbing-- for anyone in the trenches. But even after these years there is something about Vimy Ridge which gives one a tremendous respect for those whose duty it was to sit in its shadow and afterwards to take 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 of a church tower from the other side of a street. And here from a hundred feet above the enemy flung their oddments into the British lines below. It must have been exceedingly unhealthy for those British and Canadian skygazers. There is a road from Neuville cut diagonally up the precipitous face to the summit of the ridge, and thus one may climb the hundred feet to what was probably the most terrible battlefield in the 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 ihoet devilish form of warfare yet invented. Not that the platoons and companies that were blown heavenward in fragments ever knew anything about their final elevation. It was the days and weeks of strain, when the ear was ever alert to catoh 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 earn© to an end beneath the earth. To-day their 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. The lines of trenches may be traced, the opposing saps which almost meet in what was" No-Man’s Land, and the positions pf the craters show how amazingly intimate the warfare must have been. a PATCH OF ENGLAND. .In. the midst of the crater area there Atands a wooden monument stayed with H< r e and mounted on ammunition boxes, it is to the memory of those of the 78th Battalion Canadians who fell ip these parts. Avion, Lievin, Angrees, Givenchy-en-Gohelle, the little town of Vimy itself, and Neuville are all rising out of their ashes and are not 'entirely unpicturesque from a distance, with their red-roofed houses. At the orossroads at Thelus 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 red stone. Just beon the Lille-Arras road a little piece pf England seems to have strayed. It is the cottage of ail English gardener who has established a te.aroom, and in the halt acre of ground attached he has 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 pas been resumed, but reconstruction is a tong way from completion. In the main square, where hardly a building was left intact, work is still going on vigorously. The frontal pillars all round , the square *re ’ being re-erected, and the old style of architecture , is being preserved. Doubtless, JjL a month or two, this main business locality w iU be restored. In the residenparts, however, there are very many houses in the same half-demolished conjition they were in at the close of the war. Especially is this so along the Place Victor 'lingo, that once splendid avenue leading Mp to the Gard du Nord. Not a church, of course, was left intact, but some cf 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 former grandeur. THE LADY OF BUCQUOY. 11 '7 as interesting to motor pleasantly lu,* 0 Covered , by Army Map Sheet 57D, N.E., a mud-stained copy cf which I 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 familiar. Down the road from Ayette to Bucquoy there was very little to remind one that this was a thrice-contested battleheld. Once having entered the long village street of Bugquoy the indications of desofation were apparent. Everyone was busy however, and the full population seems to have returned to find a home of some kind amongst the ruins. Already half the cottagers have been restored. Having seen tins 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 could *V?t 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, naturally fled 1o the „ west again—all save one old woman. When the enemy took the eastern part of the village in March of 1918 the opposing forces shelled the outer edges of the village to powder. The centre of the yillage being No Man’s Land remained m comparative peace for some time, and here, beneath this canopy of screaming shells, aemmed in by a barrage at either end, the dear old lady carried o n her daily occupa-

tions as though all the world had gone mad and she alone were sane. Both German and English soldiers, peeping over their trenches, had the disconcerting spectacle of a peaceful citizen hanging out her clothes and attending to her garden in the middle of No Man s Land. In the end a British officer went by night, and, more by force than persuasion, brought her back behind the lines. • Puisieux-au-Mont used to be the village over the hill. For months it remained invisible to all but the airmen. But on quiet nights from the trenches about Rossignol Wood one could hear the rumble of the German transport there and the shouts of the drivers. When in August, 1918, it became a .visible objective, there was latle left of it but piles of bricks. To-day it is a place of habitation, and the people are gradually wiping out the scars °f war. On the road from Bucquoy to Puisieux 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 unshattered, but doubtless a closer inspection would reveal the pitiful mishandling it received four years ago. SERRE AND ITS LONELY ENGLISHMAN. Roadmenders and traction engines were busy along the Serre road. Hereabouts the country _ remains in a derelict condition More than any part of the old British front, this area maintains its soars of 'war. levelling-off has been done, and for some miles only the wild grass and the weeds have softened the shell-battered earth The old map gives Serre (site of), and it is just the site of Serre still. TTi e Suerrie Cemetery, where many New Zealanders lie buried, is a cultivated spot in the midst of a deserted country. Strange to say, however, one ex-British officer has built himself a home here. He was one of the engineers who remained on the battlefilds to destroy live ammunition. He married a French woman, and out of the debris of war he has built himself a tiny cafe. He ' las , not prospered, and he lives in the midst of tins desolation, a pathetic figure of an English public school boy, trying to live the life of a French peasant, and doing it badly. Other British soldiers are to be met with i n 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 but, like the rest of the men who took to themselves French wives, he finds that the women France are too closely bound to their own country to be persuaded to seek a new home across the seas. AMIENS-THEN AND NOW. Amiens—the name conjures up many pleasant memories. For so long a town of British occupation, it gained a gaiety and splendour it had probably not possessed for centuries. It was the temporary Mecca of the Somme troops. The man in the trenches whose hopes of leave were far distant consoled himself with visions of a day spent in Amiens. One there, he did himself well, and helped to enrich the traders of that town, whose prices soared steadily up and up throughout the years of war. Nevertheless our allies, unconsciouslywir otherwise, imported something of the brilliance of Baris to this northern base for the delectation of the British troops. Its streets were cheerful by night, its hotels and cafes supplied a welcome cnange from the rations further east. Everywhere was life, action, military movement, splendid uniforms, throbbing staff cars, transport of every description, English nurses, smart salutes in the streets, sumptuous dining, hard drinking, and sometimes deep regrets. It was a .bright and pleasant town if taken in moderation. To-day its glory has gone —gone completely. The great avenue leading up to the station, once crowded with guns, G.S. wagons, cars, and lorries has, perhaps, a single voiture creeping up its lengtn. The crowds which paraded the main street on Saturday night were of the orderly peasant type. 'there was something drab and uninteresting about them all. By 10 o’clock on Sunday night the streets were deserted. The impression left upon one’s mind is that nothing will happen there until next war. It is a town of ghosts.