THE ENDLESS BATTLE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 763, 21 July 1916, Page 6

THE ENDLESS BATTLE.

JBEFORE PUSH." HEROIC HOLDERS OF THE LINE. [By Philip Gibbs, Special Correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle."] There are no great separate battles to record yet on the western front (wrote the correspondent at the be- [ ginning of June). Even that attack J on the Yimy ridge which I described ! | in my last dispatch will only go! 'down as an affair of local import-j ance. And yet there is one great,; I continuous battle now being fought! along a front of nearly 100 miles,! and the people at home know nothing of it. 1 At some point or other of the line I every day—on the Yi'my ridge or in! ■the hollow of Souehez, or in the barren fields of Hulluch, or in the j mangled ground by Frieourt, from j the Yser to the Somme, there is now an intermittent bombardment greater than anything seen in any of the great battles of the world before this j war. Something Has Happened. I Yet all that is recorded lies in the. (brief line of an official bulletin:—' "There was artillery activity yesterday in the neighbourhood of 'this place or that.'" There is nothing else to record, for nothing lias "hap-1 ipened," except that some very splen-i I did young men were killed and| I wounded—their names will be in the j (Official lists —and that a trench cap-j (tured by us yesterday was recapturI ed by the enemy to-day, or the other jway about. j From a geographical point of view nothing else has happened. Spiritually (and it is difficult to write about j that in a daily newspaper) a lot has ! happened. A battalion of men at | only one point of the line—who will know about them all?—has suffered (hellish shell fire without giving ! ground. That is to say, a number of Lancashire boys who were once machine minders in the Bolton mills, perhaps, or a number of farmers* sons from Sussex or the Midlands, or a few j hundred of young Scots from Highi lands or Lowlands—you may take your choice of men in an army that! 'includes all the race—have shoulder-j 'ed their way up some long, deep! I ditches, have taken their places on] : the foresteps behind head-cover of j earth and sandbags, and in the support trencher, have established theni-i : selves in deep holes, with a full! | knowledge that in a little while the! j German guns, heavies and field mor-j tars and rifle grenades will begin to, play on them, and make a nasty mess of parapets and trench walls and i dug-outs—and yet they have not lost i their nerve or their strength of soul.' Something surely has happened, though there is "nothing to report." j Gay Gordons Again. ' j We write very little about the men ;

who go up to hold the line of trench captured from the enemy after one lof our sudden pounces. 11 is not a' ! war in which much is written about jibe ordinary routine of the job. But I those young men who follow on a | successful attack —like that on the | Vimy ridge—have sometimes a 'greater ordeal than the comrades j who went before them and gained the ground. They get there when j the enemy has re-registered his guns, I and prepared one of his intense bombardments. j They go there just in time to "get | it in the neck," as they would say; and if the ground is lost, because no! i human being may live in il, they I have the loss without the honour, because in war as in life it is success. that counts. Only their officers j know how splendid they have been, j The other day—it is one example —a battalion of the Gordons was in the line, and in one of its worst sectors. It is a battalion which counts ifself lucky because al Loos and af-j terwards it has always suffered less j than the dangers might have taken toll of them in killed and wounded. Some of my readers will remember ' this battalion of the day Gordons, for I introduced them to Ihe officers'! mess, and described the Georgian-, looking gentleman, and the gallant j "padre," and other humorous fellows', (though I forgot to mention the 1 ) Bibulous Baby—a most merry soul — | and had not yet made Ihe acquain- r lance of the miniature medico, who' , is surely the smallest doctor on re-') cord) when they were down in their , rest billets.

I Death of the Padre. | In the line the luck of the Gordons j still held good, for in spite of heavy 'shell lire and a gas atlaek they esI caned without much damage. But one | piece of ill-luck happened to them j on the way up, and it was very had. i Their padre, whom they loved ihis i side idolatry, for he had risked his ! life in their service a score of times, I and had crawled out one night to collect the identity discs of the dead | in No Man's Land, and had handed l up bombs to them in the heaviest lighting —he was a "padre" but with 1 a soldier's faith —was killed by a gasshell at some sinister cross roads. The spirit of the Gordons was hurt i by that loss, and I am sorry, too, for it was only a few weeks ago that I : looked into Ihc smiling eyes of that ; very brave man who was shy be--1 cause I had heard of his adventures. I But they held on to Ihc line with the; same lough fighting spirit, and kt>pt j il intact until on the 15th day they 1 were relieved again. They had a! long march back in their heavy kit! and in Ihe filth of the trenches. It would be good to have a rest again! How good only soldiers know. But at their very journey's end, after the long fatigue of the march, they received orders to right about face and' return to the line. The enemy had I attacked and captured a front line! trench. The Cordons would have to counterattack and drive them out. . . .It was a moment when the courage and j the patience of men might fail. At