IN THE TRENCHES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CI, Issue 15502, 12 November 1914, Page 4

IN THE TRENCHES.

BATTLE OF THE AISNE. A SEMI-SUBTERRANEAN TOWN. FIGHHNG.BY NIGHT AND DAY, Tho correspondent of the London "Daily Telegraph" reports a conversation with a .French cavalry officer who had returned to Paris from the battlefield of the Aisne on a few days' sick leave. The cavalry, as such, have had but little to do in the present battle. During the first stages- of tho fight, however, before the infantry reinforcements were brought up, they were dismounted, and took their turn in the trenches to relieve the hardly-tried regiments of the line. Tlio rainy days were the most trying, when the troops were up to their knees in water, and subjected to a particularly galling shell-fire. An unfortunate incident occurred on the allies' right, where some Turcos, becoming demoralised, abandoned their trenches, leaving a gap in the line which was promptly occupied by the Germans, who opened an enfilading fire on our trenches, inflicting heavy losses. They were displaced shortly afterwards, however, by a brilliant dismounted attack. The allied troops were in tho best of spirits, despite very heavy losses and the strain to which they were subjected. They are excellently fed, thanks to the fact that. mechanic-)! transport makes tho revictualling of the firing line a com" paratively easy matter. o F ficers and men are faring a 1 ike on bully beef, biscirts. tinned butter, and sometimes bread and iam. There is no' complaint j as to quantity of the rations, but th)s biscuit, which defies 'the efforts of all but the most dentally efficient, meets, with some and it is washed that the sh'Vs biscuit used in the navy could be adopted. NO GRUMBLING HEARD There has been no grumbling among the men, who endure hardships and fat:gue at which they would cavil on manoeuvres, without a word of complaint. Latterly British troops have been provided with a ration of grogrum and water —which is particularly welcome after a wet night in the trenches. .. accuracy of the German gunners' a l lm is everywhere praised, but their shrapnel is ineffective in comparison with that of the British and French guns. The Germans, however, are singularly well-informed of . the 'whereabouts of our troops, and waste no time in opening fire upon them. A cavrlry division was drawn ut> in the shelter of a wooded hill. They had hardly dismounted when shrapnel began to burst above them. Surprised> at this, for they were invisible to the German gunners, they searched the wood for «nies; and discovered three German officers and a civilian, who had been left behind to operate a fie'd telephone and give information thereby to +he : r nunners as *o th<> of the BrHHi troong The shot and tho officers prisoners i of war. 1 SLEEPLESS NIGHTS. '' i < Days in trenches become ditches of mud and of biOod, nights rendered sleepless by incessant bombardment, interminable fighting and marching, in no way robbed the men of the allied armies of the robust faith in their star and in their leaders which rendered possible the long retreat, the quick recovery.. and the victory on the Marne. ',l . pr P, S£ i lc P a S es of the ''Journal Uriicie. have become tho. chronicle of the glory of the French soldier. "in land battles of an exhaustion such as that now in progress the factor of the man behind the gun becomes of vast importance, and the officers in the present struggle have but one fault to find with their men—they are eager to the point of rashness in their desire to dig the enemy out with the bayonet from . .intricate maze of entrenchments. Against the rock of this will to conquer the Germans have dashed themselves m Vain. Their attack has failed a.l a.ong the line, and its failure has been accompanied with heavy loss in guns a bounded, prisoners and W+ lt - trUSt <: 0 t ba y° net charges d the battering of heavy guns have made but little alteration* along 'the beavilv entrenched centre, but the less on Itft'iS l!M * b °' h CAREFULLY-PREPARED POSITIONS. Nothing could better illustrate the cold precision with Which the men in control of the German military machine , look forward and backward than the position of the Kaiser's forces on the Aisne. Yvhile still the German army 1 was carrying all before it, preparations must have been on foot_for cooing with the difficulties in which it now finds | itself. Thus when the Germans reached the Aisno in their retreat to tho North they found an immense natural defence prepared for them, and they entered into possession of what is Tterally a city ""of trenches. "In these pits and galleries/' savs Mr G Ward Price in the "Daily Mail," " that stretch for miles along the liilVdes they have spent weeks. They ar e without exercise, cramped,, confined, obliged to sleep and eat and spond every hour of the day in the same section of damp, depressing trench. For by day the Allies' guns ketip up an almost incessant fire that makes it impossible to step up to the level ground without imminent danger of death, . and by night the chance of a surprise attack Irom their infantry is so great that every Gorman soldier must be at his posu s.eeiwng as best he may in tho nariow ditch which is at once his home and his defence, with his rifle by his side, ready to spring up to his place a.iong the parapet on the first alarm. 'j hey are very elaborate, these trenches m which the great host of the German army has been living like a gigantic, long drawn-out warren of greeny-grey rabbits. They, are floored, many of them, with .cement; they are roofed over with boards covered with sods'that serve both to keep out the ra.n and to hide them from French or British aeroplanes; they are divided into chambers communicating by doors rhere are, of course, several lines of them. There as the most advanced trench m which tho outposts mount guard at night v then two or three hundred yards behind is the main line of entrenchments, and behind that . again are great pits dug out of the ground to serve as jkitchens or dormitories in which the reserves and supports for the first line live These rearward trenches are connected with the foremost line bv parallel passage-ways, and there are other paralle.s in which machine-guns nW+f, + v° OW3r 1110 heads of the men that line the parapet. Then beIhe hri frTA R c , lialk quarries of it? i • • the emplacements where I the big siege guns, belted down to their cement platforms and the howitzers that .toss a shoU high; into -the?air for it to fall three miles away, are posted. A . whole semi-subterranean town i n . fact with main thoroughfares and'side streets and telephone wires running all along, where hundreds of.thousands of men eat and hVe and sleep, and yet so well concealed that, from a little way I

down the hill in front you would sec nothing to tell you of its existence unless it were a hardly noticeable little hank of earth raised slightly above the surface of the ground. Soit is that the Germans are resisting the allies' rdvance hidden in this labyrinth of trenches and half-subterranean gangways that follow for mile after mile the side of the valley of the Aisne and stretches beyond towards the woods of the Argonne; damp dwellings though they may be they are an excellent defence against the artillery that is still bombarding them from sunrise to sunset, and Sometimes during the night as well." ' SAVAGERY AT ORCHIES. "The Germans have destroyed Orchies, where there has been a good deal of fighting of the ' pendulum' type. They have burned the entire viuage, comprising some 200 houses, disposed along a centra!, straggling street. The depths of their savagery may be gauged by tho following story, which I myself had .at first hand: In one of. the houses at Orchies there lived a family consisting of two old women and their husbands, together with the married daughter of one of the couples, her husband, and their three children. The daughter's husband was a pool-, consumptive wretch,, unable to fight, unable to resist the destruction of his home. The Germansn took him. and with him the two old men, each nearly 70 years of age, and shot the three of them outside their burning honso, from which they drove their other victims forth. I met them on the road near D , worn out, after plodding blindly along for 20 kilometres without rest. The old women were dry-eyed, but utterly dazed wit}! the horror of the thing that had come upon them. The young widow told mo the story as dispassionately as if she lnd been recounting & dream. The German Army has swept over th : s countryside, leaving, it para'ysed with a dread and terror whi-h have go numbed the minds of the neasantry that they had not yet been able to take fuil account of their own most intimate tragedies."