THE DOMINO OFFENSIVE.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7913, 2 August 1917, Page 4

THE DOMINO OFFENSIVE.

NEW BATTLES ON OLD GROUND. GREAT BOMBARDMENTS. (N.Z. Official War Correspondent). BELGIUM, June 5. At intervals towaids the close of our preparations, for about a week, there were intensive bombardments of the German lines. The enemy never knew at what moment our guns might give tongue. And he never could tell, from day to day, what such a bombardment might portend. For all he knew it might culminate in an attack in force. The continued bombardments must have tried him sorely. It must also have shattered the nerve of his men in the front and support lines, and have affected others in safer positions a good deal further back. Prisoners captured told us that he had been expecting an attack since the 15th of May. Some, captured later, told us that the attack was expected on the 3rd of June. The Berlin wireless referred to artillery engagements that “readied great intensity in the Wytschaete sector,” and the people of Germany were warned that an Allied offensive was about to take place. Shortly before noon on Sunday, 3rd June, I watched Wytschaete going up in clouds of red dust. It had been a ! small village just north of Messines and east of the Kemmel Ridge. To the north of it the line bent in the famous salient rouud Ypres, and thence ran northward to the seat. It was the King’s Birthday—a beautifully fine morning, with a fresh breeze tempering the heat of the sun. Our heavies were playing on Wytschaete and the neighboring trenches to some purpose. With the explosion of each shell clouds of dark grey or yellow, tinged with umber, rose in mushroom-like shape or in great straight spurts, the latter hundreds of feet in the air. Sometimes the bursts took strange shapes, the torn earth spurting out sideways at a steep angle in radiating lines in the shape of a quarteropened fan, or rising in cumulus form with the smoke of the shell itself. The ridge from Messines over which the trenches ran to Wytschaete, now bare and brown and shorn of all its greenery of a few weeks ago, received its quota of shells of smaller calibre. But always the eye returned to the direction of Wytschaete, where a veritable inferno raged. In the same way Messines had already been wiped out. Of the buildings that we used to look upon in the clear evening light, silhoutted on the crest of the ridge against the eastern sky, scarce a vestige now remained. But this bombardment of Messines •' few days ago and of Wytschaete this morning was local in its scope and not to be compared to the bombardment by the guns of the whole army, which, at 3 o’clock on the afternoon of the 3rd June began to turn miles of the German line into a seething cauldron of dust and smoke and flame. For nearly a full hour we watched, with a strange fascination, this intensive cannonade. Overhead, from the direction of Bailleul, came flights of our droning ’planes, one of the big triplanes turning somersaults in the air with an ease and a safety begotten of the utmost confidence and stability. Looping the loop is now a mere incident of a forgotten age —our airmen, greatly daring, now do things that would amaze the pilots of pre-war days. Away over the Boche lines, above and into the seething cauldron flew these ’planes, shot at by the enemy guns, but seldom hit. Behind us the sky was dotted with a long line of our strangely-shaped captive >alloons that showed the direction in vhich the line ran north and south roin where we had taken our standpoint. It was the line itself that eld our gaze. Since our last attack n the Somme on the Ist of October ast year I had rarely seen such conentration of artillery fire. In one ninute the whole line was going up in louds of amoke and dust. Hundreds f guns of varied calibre were at vork, and the destruction wrought y their bursting shells formed a creen of brownish grey against the ight blue of a summer sky—a screen hat as it rose was bent over by the rind and blown back over the German osition, leaving clear observation or us, but making things exceedingy obscure and uncomfortable for the nemy. Wytschaete came into the cheme of things again, and presently great column of smoke arose from eliind its ridge, as if some building had been set afire, or some dump of heavy ammunition had suddenly exploded. On the ridge to the left of Messines the bombardment was particularly heavy and effective. It seemed as if nothing could live in those trenches.

DECEIVING THE ENEMY. Presently this great screen of smoke and dust and fragmented earth became, all of a sudden, dotted with pretty puffs of white—one lot of guns had switched off on to a different kind of shell, and were putting down a smoke barrage. This ordinarily means the screening of advancing men, and the enemy takes it for a sign of attack. But on this occasion he was deceived, for no attack was intended, and no waves of men advanced over t he parapet. That was to come later. Meantime the white smoke of the barrage, mingling with the darker line, turned the screen to ashen grey, the while the reports of the guns and the crashing of the shells grew into a regular thunderous roll. The wind carried the sound as well as the smoke away from us, but many a German soldier, and many a Belgian villager in that sad hinterland behind the Ypres Canal and the River Lys must have listened wonderingly, with presage of death and destruction in his mind. Away on the ridge between Messines and Wytschaete we could see three of our ’planes flying low over the German trenches. And further back a Boche balloon loomed indistinctly through the smoky air. At times the gold flame of bursting shrapnel gleamed, even in the sunlight. The enemy evidently thought that it was the hour of attack, and presently his 5.0.5., a white light, climbed up the sky. But it was some few minutes before his guns answered the ; call, and then his barrage was not I much of a reply to our tremendous bombardment. It was mostly high explosive—five-point-nines and four-. point-twos. There may have been *

a few shells from the heavier calibres, but one did not see many such bursts. It was perhaps not fair to expect him to be more active than he was. It was Sunday afternoon, and after his cinner-hour. And we had never played him such a trick before. But these were only preliminary bombardments. The real thing was still to come. AIR COMBATS. Almost any evening now you may see in the air a duel of the most exciting and spectacular kind. The other day one of our men brought down a Boche ’plane. It turned over and over as it fell, and before it had fallen far a man tumbled out of it. For him that must have been a terrible descent. To-night, while writing in my little hut after dinner, I heard the distant popping of a machine gun in the sky, and, dashing to the door, was in time to see the tracer bullets from a Boche ’plane aimed at one of our balloons a few fields away. The two men climbed quickly out of their basket and took the parachute plunge that is always so interesting to an onlooker, and that must be so thrilling to the observer. Slowly, very slowly, the two parachutes, borne eastwards towards the German lines on a light breeze, descended, till I lost sight of them behind a hedge. There was much speculation as to whether they would fall in ours or the enemy’s lines. The German pilot dived after them, firing his machine gun at them as he flew, but, apparently, without effect. Then some of our attacking ’planes frightened him home. “That was a very feeble effort,” said a man beside me, and a Belgian Count remarked that this was a very unsporting war when one man could shoot at another man who was unarmed in a falling parachute.

It was half-past nine by the summer clock, and the balloon was a dark silhouette just below the round moon. The flashes of the shells aimed at the departing Boche made sparks in the sky. And black against the opal of the zenith our droning ’planes were coming home to roost after their eventful day. Dipping down into the amber of the western sky, they sought the aerodrome that was their home. Some there were that did not come back. For these the brilliant flares that were meant for guiding lights were shot into the darkening sky at intervals, till there was no more hope. There would be some vacant chairs in the mess to-night. For an hour or more the flares went up in vain, affording only another spectacle to the curious, for brave pilot and observer had either crashed to earth or landed far from home. Lucky they were who landed behind their own lines, lucky even they who could make a safe landing in No-Man’s Land. The latter had at least a chance of getting home, even though the flares had died down.