THE NEW WARFARE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 145999, 4 December 1917, Page 4

THE NEW WARFARE.

NO CONNECTED LINES OF DEFENCE. BEWITCHING ENTANGLEMENTS. The Yorkshire troops who distinguished themselves by their hand-to-hand capture of German forts northcast of St. Jnhen and along the Poelcapcllo road were entangled in a sort of battle quite new in the annals of war (writes Mr. W. Beach Thomas in tho Daily Mail). , . What tho struggle is like in its physical details may bo in fact described, though imagination will hardly grasp all the bewitched entanglements through which our men struggled. When you have crossed the crazy marsh that w-as once tho Yser Canal and readied the old German front line oi the days when lines existed, you will find about a quarter of a mile farther on the first of tho now German blockhouses, much ' bombarded by us, but only enough bitten to show tho first layer of iron railings that form its double vertebrae. One of those concrete forts it is wise to avoid, for into it crawled many German wounded, who, along with the hale garrison, wore all “shocked” to death by one enormous shell. Farther on is a house whore some of our officers, resting for the moment inside it, had the supremo satisfaction of enjoying two direct Hits by Gorman shells and hearing them duck-and-drake harmlessly oft tho surface. But almost all the fighters, German and British, pass their fighting hours in shell holes. There arc few trenches, there is not much wire, there are no linos of men; no geometric patterns other than circular. SNIPERS BUSY. When an officer of a battalion or a brigade wishes to go forward to talk to his men, ns he has done daily throughout tho war, ho cannot always go by day without running the gauntlet of snipers firing from promiscuous holes in the marsh like Indian duck shooters. If ho goes at night, ho may havo to make a series of partial calls at scores of pits and holes. Ono battalion commander of a North Midland unit, who • habitually braved the day journey, enjoyed a new and stirring experience. Almost every day he fought a duel with a German sniper, whom he finally routed by tho expert use of his orderly’s rifle, and another with a German aeroplane, which pursued him and fired a drum of bullets from 300 feet. Iu some places even tho usual reliefs are very difficult, and on a day when an attack comes many men have to solve the tougher geometric problem of resolving themselves from circles into straight- lines. When this is dons, and they progress, behind a barrage that moves like a snail to suit itself to the slow wading of tho men, they engage in a series of sieges of scattered forts, some small and loopholcd for machine-guns, some blind and big, used chiefly for protection from shell fire, f/ome few have two compartments, one windowed and of sound walls. Through ,tho barrage behind which the Yorkshires advanced hissed a counter-bar-rags of machine-gun bullets coming from blockhouses far in tho enemy’s roar.

PICKED GERMAN TROOPS. The men, Yorkshires and others of whoso experience in especial I write, met quite the most stalwart of German troops, whose quality now differs as the poles. Some of them even camo out into the open in the midst of our barrage, and used light machine guns from the open. The defence is desperate, because tho Germans dare not lose tho one crucial ridge on which their position in this part of Flanders is based. Everything defendablo has been defended, A little jagged rhomboid of brick, all that was loft of a farm building, faced one of the advancing platoons. It was negligible in itself, and looked as if a touch would knock it down or a. bullet flatten it. When it was reached it was found to consist of two yards of reinforced concrete, built so as to follow exactly the tough-hewn contour of the brick, and it contained excellent shelter for a machine gun with its crew.