A STRICKEN BATTLE AREA.

Timaru Herald, Volume CV, Issue 16081, 30 September 1916, Page 3

A STRICKEN BATTLE AREA.

VISIT TO OyiLLERS. I . -SITES THAT "WERE VILLAGES. \ Tho "Timos", Correspondent writes .writes under date, August .There is probably no more dreadful region In .-aIJ this stricken battle area ■.than? that, . whiuh-Los about and, beyond '.Ovillers-La Boisse'le. Thoi'e^i'©'po.adjectives in which to describe its lndeousness. . My object in being theire to-day was to pusli up as tar as a civilian might over the ground.just wan. to tike' west of Pozieres.' M . far as La Boiscllo itself you can take, your motor-car along the main. Albort-Bapaume' road, though you will ■ biM'c the road to yourself when, you do it.' La Boisselle on the right of the load is not more than a flat layer of ponndod gi'ey stones and mortar on the i bare-face rof the earth. Of anything like a village or individual buildings there is, of course, no semblance. On the J eft of the' road the ground dips steeply down for fifty yards or so, then slowly rises to what is called OvillersLißoisselle, because that was where a village of that name stood until a few weeks ago. To-day, if La Boisselle is almost oblitcraed, Ovillers-La Boisselle is non-existent.

■■• Standing on the edge of the wliito road in the glaring sunshine, with, the roar-of>■ our own guns behind one and -the other guns ahead, one feels oneself .the only - landmafk in a waste. The '.whole earth's surface, before and aloim'd, is' torn with shell botes and sehniod with lines of-trenches, all white, becausbr'tho soil here is chalk." Such .land as. there is betwecm, imscarred, is almost of - vegetation with only ■hero and „therc a thin coat' of sickly grass or a dnsty tuft'of cornflower, mallow. or white camomile. Opposite, crowning the gentle, slope before you, a few ragged stumps; fragments of tree /trunks some 10ft. high, with bits of splintered lower branches sticking from 2the;m,' stand .gaunt against the sky and i'marli where Ovillers used to be. •

' AN'OLD FRONT LINE TRENCH. ■ Heading for Gvillers, we—for an i officer :was with-me—left the road and went down across the torn and blasted earth "-to the white line of what was .once'the: German front line trench. It if a trench. no more. It was not much of" a trench by the time our guns had don? with it at' the beginning of this ■ba-ctie. After i.h.it, it was pounded ,day and night through all the desperate •fighting,-which,r ivent on. for:the possession- of ;;_Ovillers.- Since then, the enemy -has devoted a certain number of shells a day 'to knocking the poor\ remnants of it about a little more. It is a futile occnpation, bo"ause no one, except an inquisitive, visitor like myself, wouM dream of; .walking along'it. The para':pet is: mostly! , stre.wn- all over tho ground, t: 'ln places •it is mixed with, and-lills up, the trench, so that you go oa.tho leyel-of the. ground. Then- a few yards .may .be decently intact, so that vhalf:v,choked ;: with irubbish l at. it : is, it gives you'shelter, perhaps, waist high.: It,'and th<\ ground; around, are littered iMth equipment Caitndges, used 01 unused, . and .nn,expl;oded 'bombs and bits of-shells, l .or whole shells, "duds," are .everywhere beneath your feet. - In the hoi sun -the chalk is intensely white and the -lieat bea.ts back on you from the naked earth, and tho air is thick with the'dreadful >smell which belongs to battlefields and with the buzzing of flies. It is trn.lv a vile nlacc "WHERE OVILLERis ONCE STOOD;

At last you- come to - a -parting of the way, where an o'.tl German, sign still sticks up fiom the fire step of the trench,: one 'hand of it - pointing "Nach Pozieres."- .You-turn ;where it tells you go on —in tho trench or beside it, it does not matter —till you pass the ragged bits of tree-trunks, and you are in Ovali'ers r._You v ould not-Know it but> for~the I tiee'"fipgments/and J when you 100k,..y0u see that there,is a quantity of broken. JbyiTk and stone*/ mixed "up with the kneaded earth, and 1 also you come to a hole in the ground which, being, square and-lined with brick, is obviously. not a shell hole, but must be a. cellar which once had a house above it'. , '

„By this -time I Ijave seen a good deal of, 1 uin, -hut I have talked "to exports who have seen, more than I," and they <igu>p that Ovillcas is movo utteih* destroyed than any other/village in the battle "irea. J

•No village could ho more destroyed, .because there is nothing left but - the ooMai winch I hare ment'ono I ind two oi'.thiee otheis like' it, meie holes in the' eround and minus quantities, as far as '.hey/are',buildings at all. Of superstructure to the earth thero is none. One point there is-which those who go there 1 spealc of as a place to take vour br>nrings from—a sort of Greenwich in tins sea of desolation—ancl it is called--"The Ch'urch.--'' TJndotibtedly a churoh cnce'was-theT-e, because the map say* so; and there is still one fra.gment'of a wall which ma.v have been part of a, church, ancl by it two graves. AVhy' these survive it is impossible to say; If .it. was: not tor thorn no spot in Ovillers.. above ground' wou?d be different from any other. 1 DTJG-OUTS FOB 2,000 GERMANS. Undergi oimd it is different. You have already heard how it was estiTi'o.tccl that the' dug-outs here could hold, and did hold, 2,000 Germans. It is doubtless true. One fears' from the :smell :that they .hold -many yet. ■We went clown into sovoral, though the entrances to most are battered in by shells, and groped about by the light of Jnatches .among- the litter and the darkness. There is one great dug-out—l mentioned it from hearsay at the time ---vrho>r,j;eight;y 'dead Germans were lcuna, the placce, it is supposed, having been . used, in the last days of desperate lighting,_ as a kind of vault into which the dead were- hurriedly thrown with! the intention some time of. wrecking the place or sealing it up, or otherwise mak- ' ing it into a tomb. • Another large dug-out there is which tho uermans used as a dressing station. It is admirably constructed, find lias besides the main entrance from the trench, another opening for exit which gave upon a. road whore van a tramway l.ne by .which the wounded et uld be taken from the very door of the dressing station hack behind the lines On .through Ovillers we wont l">y tlie ..winclin g tn enches, not know.ng when wo lefi the: village behind *>ny more r than When we entered ft. And here one does not climb out of the trench to look. One cannot put a ueriscouo up without its hs'ing shot to b'ts. Close ;rc hand the rjfl€s spat, continuously and inachme.guiis stuttered and growled, a:nd we had trench morta.i-s at work, wlrch heaved projectiles, into the air so slowly that you saw then sail majestically.to where the-"enemy was hidVig in his trenclies, there to explode prodigiously. For short ransres they are as serious as any sliell of their size from;.a great gun. ■ To our right, close t>y, we weire assured was Pozieres, though I confess 1 saw nothing of it, and to our left, a little further off, was Thiepval, which also, though I have seen it from other places, 1 did not see from here. And ahead was Moilquot Farm. AM all around was heat, and noi.se, and that almost intolerable atmosphere.