ON THE SOMME.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 14195, 12 January 1917, Page 4

ON THE SOMME.

A NEW BATTLE. WITHIN VIEW OF RAPAUMJ^. ■ (From C. E,. W. Bean, Australian War Correspondent with tlie A.1.F.). , BRITISH HEADQUARTERS IN • FRANCE, November 9. This week an y Australian force made its attack hi quite a different "area of the Somme battle. Tlie .sky was blue in patches with cold 1 wh'tto clouds betw.esn. The wind blew icily. There had been practically no rain for two days^— we were .in quite a new corner of the battle. The New Zea*landers had pushed right through to the comparative green country just here, and so had the British to north and south of it. We. were well over the slope to the main ridge up which the Somme battle raged for the first three- months. Pozieres, the. highest point, where Australians first peeped over it, lay miles away to . our left rear. From the top of the ridge behind, looking back over your left shoulder, you could just see a few distant broken tree stumps. I think they marked the site of that old nightmare'. • 3'HE GREEN AND BROWN COUNTRY .We were looking down" a long even slope to <l long upsplope beyond. The' l country around us was mostly brown and shellholes. Not like the shejlholos of that blasted hilltop of two months' back — I have never seen anything quite lika that, though they say that "Guille: ] mont, which I have not seen, is as devastate*. In this present area .there is green grass between tha rims -of v the I shell holes, but not enough to matter. The general color of the country on. the British sida is -brown — all gradations 'ot it-— from this sloppy gray brown mud, trampled liquid with the feet, of men ahd horses, to dull, putty-like brown mud soi .lock that when you get your .foot, into it it, -is ---a constant 'problem whether you will be able to get it .out again without'calling someone to help you. This is not- 'an exaggeration, it is a doubt which constantly occurs to you when7 ever- you walk through .that country. Men live there a life of mud in a landscaV» of mud — never, knowing for days .together what it is to have a dry placo to sit upon. or dry clothes or boots to live ' in. For it ' is the country over which the tight had passed. As we .advance, wo advance always on to. the area which' has been torn with shells— where the villages and the trenches and «the surface of the green country' has 'been battered and shattered, first by our guns and then by the German guns,' until they have made; a hell out of heaven— and always just ahead of us, a mile- . or so behind the German 'lines, there is. heaven smiling — you can see it quite clearly in this part, just up the opposite slope of the wide open valley. There is the green Country ori which thp Germans are always being driven back, and up which this monstrous engine of war has not yet begun his low gruesome climb. «- THE LID GOES OVER. , There was a fair amount of scattered shelling at intervals all over the landscape. About nine, o'clock it suddenly burst out into an uproar from behind us. A section of the valley in front, quickly filled with the dust of shell bursts, so that you could barely see the, hillside beyond that part. A line of light khaki' .tunics is climbing out of the .mud down '"near tho lower edge of tlie valley on oui- side. You cannot see the bottom of tho valley, . which is over tho edgo of tha knuckle. Tho line clambers up on tc> the .surface with its rifles, and •then goes forward at a glow pace, picking holes. A good four minutes we could sesa it moving steadily — within three mjnutes tho back German shell bursts begin to sprout up beliind and around it, but it does not seem io alter, pace for a second, it went on evenly till we lost sight of it over -the. edge of the slope. You could, see the sun Hash' from a bayonet here and .there , as they moved. Then nothing mora except shell after shell bursting hour after hour behind them and all over the fore slope of the hill. . Away to our flank wo could sea to the bottom of .the valley. There rose from the green flats on this side a curious white distairfr mound. I should say that it was forty feet high— *the shells were bursting constantly about jt; the whole skin, of it had been removed by incessant shelling, leaving only the white bare chalk beneath. Tliat was the ' I \ ■ ■