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Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7752, 22 July 1916, Page 1

ANZACS AT THE FRONT. OFF TO THE FIRING LINE. NEW ZEALANDERS MARCH OUT. (From Malcolm Ross, Official War Correspondent with N.Z. Forces). (First Article). NORTHERN FRANCE, May 28. Months of training and action in varied lands and climes have familiarised us with the details of active service—with the tragedy and the comedy of war, for insofar as the Anzacs are concerned, we have our moments of gaiety as well as of sadness. Tragedy has come hot-foot over the ilex-covered ridges and marched stealthily across the hot desert sands to meet us face to face in trench and dug-out. And in interludes in -the fighting and in the lighting itself comedy has walked with us hand-in-hand. And so it is here, and will be to the end. In these days of stress and strain it is difficult for the war correspondent to descend from the general to the particular, but in these and the following articles I shall endeavor to give some description of the sights and sounds met with in and about our sector. THE DISTANT GUNS. On the evening of our arrival the air was palpitating with the throbbing sound of a distant cannonade. Ihe loud booming of the bigger guns and the more staccato banging of the smaller ones came in an incessant chorus across the fields and the forests, rising and falling in a cadence that seemed as if it would be neverending. For miles at night-time the sky was lit with the flashes of artillery. Flares sent from the distant trenches illumined the clouds, and at intervals the long bright fingers of the searchlights waved across the firmament. Away in the south a flashing light rose intermittently above the tree tops. This was the glare of furnaces, from the throats of which poured the molten steel that means so mfich to a modem army. What all this was about we did not know. It was not in our sector. It did not concern us intimately. It was simplv an indication of the vast enterprise in which we had become involved. A GIGANTIC STRUGGLE. The enterprises in which we had engaged in the past were vast enough in all conscience, yet the mind reels before the new and more gigantic manifestations with which we are confronted. From day to day one looks at the brief communique posted at Headquarters, and notes that some aircraft have been brought down or that some bit of trench has been lost or taken. It is a bald announcement. Imagination must fill in the details. It is a bald announcement in a period of comparative inactivity. It seems all so dreadfully bald and prosaic, and there is an irritating sameness about it all. Yet we who are on the spot know that day and night all along the line men are being killed and wounded, and that the best brains of the opposing nations are scheming and plotting to end it all as quickly as may be. The war seems to have settled down along a narrow strip of territory stretching for hundreds, nay, for thousands of miles across the land. Behind that line the world goes on with its work—feverishly in the centres where guns and ammunition are being made, hut with the same old quiet rural simplicity where the grass is growing, and the corn is daily coming nearer to the ear under the alternating influence of rain and summer sunshine. In the narrow battle zone men are at grips with all the diabolical appliances of modern warfare, and new machines which we must not describe are being pressed into the service of man-killing. On our small sector comparative calm reigns, though Death takes his daily toll. On the Italian frontier, as I write, there is a vast and deadly struggle going on. At Verdun the enemy, with what almost seems the madness of despair, is hurling battalions and brigades and divisions in a vain attempt at victory. The clash of arms there is on a truly gigantic scale, and the carnage too dreadful to contemplate. But Verdun is a long way off, and the sounds of its most intense cannonade do not even faintly reach our ears. THE BRIGADES MARCH OUT. For a time the Anzacs were scattered over a large area. The Australians were the first to go into the trenches, and it was not long before they had their new baptism of fire with German high explosive. Then our brigades began to march out. Even one brigade, with all its impediments, makes a great showing on the road. On a beautiful summer day two of the brigades came tramping along the hard paved roads, through country lands and towns and villages. For hours I watched them passingsturdy sons from the Southern land — and for a time marched with them, chatting to old friends and acquaintances. They were in high spirits, eager to get into the trenches and pit their valor against that of the Boche. With waggons and motor-lorries, and machine-gun sections and ambulances, with travelling kitchens —chimneys smoking and pots steaming—with their bands playing, with snatches of song, and, at intervals, a tune whistled, they came along a road lined with apple trees in gay blossom. The blare of the trumpets and the roll of the drum gave an air of the oldtime wars to the scene. It was all so very different from what we were used to on Gallipoli. They swung over a bridge, and men and horses and waggons were duplicated in the placid waters of the straight canal. From the beautiful grounds of an ancient chateau that existed when we fought other wars here—and centuries before —the Baronne, shrewd, capable, and witty, watched them pass. The villagers at the doors of their steeptiled red and brown cottages gazed at the new soldiers with interest and