MEMORIES OF MESSINGS.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 September 1924, Page 13

MEMORIES OF MESSINGS.

THE BATTLEFIELD TO-DAY. SEVEN YEARS’ CHANGES. . FIELDS OF GOLDEN CORN. Ypree, August 7. Set along the brow of Massines Ridge there is a row of concrete blockhouses from which the enemy surveyed the war-‘scarred valley and registered the destruction wrought by their guns. They mark the line of the old German support trenches, and they remain in this locality a.s a visible token of when the world was mad. To-day the cattle, weary of the luscious grass, and, for some reason known only to themselves, mount to the top of these weed-covered strongholds—surely a symbol as significant as t’he swords beaten into ploughshares.. Beyond these permanent monuments of war there is little to remind one of the hideously mutilated face of Nature that was known to so many New Zealanders seven years ago. Down in the valley, however, where the men from the Dominion, and those who preceded them, formed their foremost barrier of steel before the great battle, a strange thing has happened. The little Steenebeek, which once wound its sluggish way down “No Man’s Land,” has forsaken the lowest bed of the valley and found a new course down the Douve along the old British front-line trenches, finis preserving them by erosion. NEW ZEALAND’S FOUR ACRES. On the right-hand side of the country road from Le Rossignol, and 300 yards below the Au Bon Fermier Cabaret, newly-erected on the old site, a section of land four acres in extent is now in the possession of the New Zealand Government. The section runs down to the foot of the slope, but the site chosen for the battle memorial is at the top, and includes inside its front boundary two of the German concrete blockhouses in perfect state of preservation. The Rossignal Road marked the centre line of the New Zealanders’ advance, and the “pill-boxes” on the brow of the ridge were the first serious obstructions to the attacking troops. Nd more appropriate position could have been chosen to place this memorial to the dead and the living who took part in the Battle of Meesines.

Among those who were present at the ceremony of unveiling the memorial, performed by the King of Belgium on August 1, were four who took some part in the action on June 7, 1917, but none who actually stormed the ridge or spent the anxious and strenuous days preceding the battle in the frontline trenches. Those who had gone through flame and shell would have desired to indulge their strange ana deep emotions alone and in qiiietneas on this site where history was made. Unveiling and dedication ceremonies have their purpose, but- the true significance of the work of art can be best appreciated when the pomp and pageantry has passed. The architect, Mr. S. Hurst Seager, has brought more than his art to bear upon his splendid monuments in France and Belgium. He has studied every phase of the actions he has commemorated, and he has chosen a setting in each case which is to the central monument like the music to the action of a grand opera. A SOLDIER’S MEMORIES. One who had gone through the battle of seven years ago would wish to visit the place alone. He would glance at the monument for a moment and resolve co reserve it for the climax of his meditations. He would prefer first to lean over the balustrade at the foot of the enclosure where an oak seat breaks the line of the frontage. After seven years • what changes can take place! Had he j looked back on the panorama seven I years ago he would have seen a bleak, j yellow wilderness with columns of I smoke rising from the bursting shells — not a vestige of beauty as far as the ■ eye could reach. To-day, he looks ; across on one of the fairest scenes shaped by Nature for the delight of man. And knowing the country as it i was under the blasting breath af war, he picks out the familiar but marvellously transformed points of the landI scape, and each recognition brings with it a deep flood of strange emotions.

Six kilometres to the north-west Mount Remmel towers on the horizon I Eight kilometres to the west is the > tower of the new church of Dranoutre, 1 and on the horizon further south is the resurrected Neuve Eglise. To the south-west, just three kilometres away, is Hill 3, where the great trees, once stark and bare against the sky-line, have put forth a covering of green leaves. Down from Hill 63 is the long line of Plopgstreet Wood recovering again from its years of sickness, for the young undergrowth is thick and green, and even the shell-shattered trunks have covered themsfleves anew* with foliage. In the distance to the south may be seen the towers of Armentieres —a name which conjures up many a memory —and to the south-east the town af Warneton. RED-ROOFED FARM BUILDINGS. Enclosed in this semi-circle of hills are the rich fields of golden corn alternating with green patches where the i reaper has already passed over. Just down below, a reaper-and-binder is at work on the meadow’s that slope gently to the little Steenebeek, and the redroofed farm buildings mark the spots which bore names but were merely mounds of debris. Just 600 yards across to the left is a group of substantial red-roofed farm buildings. It. is the modern version of La Petite Dcuve Ferme, the object of more than on raid, and the ultimate prize of two platoons of the Ist Rifles. On the flat land in front is the new La Plus Douve Ferme; to the right the group of houses at Enclave; and beyond the village of Wulverghem, peeping out above the crest of a small hill. There is absolutely nothing except the two pill-boxes j close at hand and a few visible beyond > on either side to indicate to the J stranger that this part of Belgium was a grim desert but a few short years i a o°Yet even the fair landscape stretched before him brings back to the observer who knew this battlefield a wealth of memories. There is the road by which lie first came into the wide arena; there is the place he entered the long winding communication trench; there ♦he front line where he kept vigil *nd

waited while the enemy’s trenches were being -blotted out by the shells whicn shrieked day and night above his head; and there, when sft»ro hour came, the line of route .he mounted the hillside behind the wall of fire and steel. There, too, is where his friends and comrades fell. And so his thoughts come back to the present and to the work of art which in some strange way embodies and perpetuates the sacrifices made by the division when they swept the enemy before them in the half light of a morning in June seven years ago.