N.Z. DIVISION

Southland Times, Issue 17756, 6 September 1917, Page 5

N.Z. DIVISION

LETTER FROM GENERAL GODLEY. A REST AFTER MESSINES. (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, September 5. In the House of Representatives this afternoon, Sir Jas. Allen read the following extracts from a letter written to him by General Godley, dated 12th July last:— The New Zealand Division has been out of the line, resting for some time now, and they are all very lit and well. I had to find a brigade to go and work for the French army near here, who arrived very tired from the south, and had to get a lot of work done in a hurry, so I selected the New Zealand Rifle Brigade and sent them off. Yesterday I visited General Antoine, who commands the French army, and you will be glad to hear that he and his staff are most enthusiastic about the work the New Zealanders have done and the way they have behaved. Altogether they have earned golden opinions. I saw Fulton, and some of his commanding officers and battalions, and they are all enjoying the change, and it is a great experience for them to be so thoroughly identified with and sandwiched in with the French. Darky Chaytor has just paid us a visit on his way from England to Egypt, and he and Studholme and Richardson have fixed up various matters for the proper co-ordination of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force here, in England, and in Egypt.. . . . . , The Tung has just paid us a visit here, and saw representative detachments of the division, which lined his route and cheered him as he passed. We also had a visit from the Duke of Connaught, for whom we paraded a special detachment of his regiment, the Rifle Brigade, and representative detachments of others. We have gradually got our new lines pretty well consolidated and established, and ’are looking forward to a fresh move in the direction of Berlin. Since I wrote I have been up to Messines, and it is a most extraordinary sight, absolutely flat and more completely pitted with shell holes and the ground more absolutely broken up than that on the Somme, which I described in a previous letter. In fact Pozieres and the other places down there are nothing to it, as in the case of Messines it got a shelling both ways, first of all from us, and ever since from the Boche. I have had to put the place out of bounds and have put a ring fence round it, as the Boche shells it so severely and persistently.