AMONG FRICOURT MINEFIELDS.

Waikato Times, Volume 87, Issue 13269, 26 August 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

AMONG FRICOURT MINEFIELDS.

One sentence has occurred often enough ni our official c'<inuninii(|ue in have a familiar rhythm. "A mine was exploded yesterday near Fricourt." Sometimes it is an eueitu's—uniui-U)**—4«;< —rrp+ndni. and sometimes it is one of our own. hut hardly a \wck passes without an earthquake in that ninth troubled ground. It is nearly a year now since T first went down to the minefields of Fvicoiirt (writes Philip (libbs). and the other day 1 went round wondering what changes F should see in the tumbled earth and in that, silent, village beyond, where the Germans watch the trenches from hiding places m ruined houses. it was in the. early summer when I first went. and 1 remember that 1 sat in the front garden of an old house, used as the headquarters of the men waiting for a soldier to guide me to the lines. Presently an orderly arrived with one of those little bits ot pink "flimsy"' on which regimental officers write their reports. The General read it and then turned to me with a cheerful smile. "You're in luck. Our miners down in the Bois Francais have heard the enemy's picks. They expect a mine, to go up in half an hour or s<i. You had better get along and have a look at it." I failed to see the luck, but an amiable imitation like this is difficult to refuse, so T went along, with my heart in my boots, devoutly hoping that the mine would rrol. "go up" when f happened to he in its immediate neighbourhood. For tunately I missed it by two hours, but 1 saw enough of the Bois Francais, and ol the Tambour, which is not far away. U. understand the evil reputation of thai village of Fricourt from which the Ger mans come down into their sap-heads and mine-shafts. .My visit to this ground a few days ago confirmed my worst impres sions.

Fricourt itself, into which I stared from a shelter of sandbags is a sinister place. The powers of .nil I ,ive made their dwelling there, and it is utteny blasted. In the cemetery the graves have been opened by shell holes, and the orchard beyond will bear no fruit this year on its withered boughs. The church in the centre of the village is a ghastly ruin, hut its walls gleam white in the sun midst the huddle of broken barns and charred walls. Before the war it was a pretty French village. Now in German bands, it is one of the headquarters of death, and there is a horror in its silence where no sound of any living thing is heard. To the left of the village, beyond a snudl wood which looks in the distance like a furry caterpillar, and on the high ground above the trenches, there are six or seven tall trees which have escaped from shell-fire, and in the centre of them is a tall crucifix of Calvary, upon which the figure of Christ hangs. If I had the good luck to be a poet I should write a verse or two about that figure on the trees above the mine-fields of Fiicourt, for the image of Sorrow and Sacrifice looks down upon the way in which men kill each other, and no other thing is to be seen there on these fields which are heaved up from time to time by underground explosions. The French held this ground for many months of the war, and little bits of blue uniforms still lie about the tumbled earth They fought ferociously here at the Tambour, and it was their mines which first flung up the soil of the Bois Francais, the French' Wood, as it was called on the maps Now there is no wood there. Not one single tree stands, nor is any fallen tree visible. It is a chaos of brown earth, in which so many mines have burst that the craters have merged into each other, shapelessly. So it is in the Tambour, or the Drum, as we should call it, and along all the line of No Man's Land, which stretches for a hundred yards or so between the opposed trenches. Our miners have obtained the mastery, 1 am told, and they infect more damage upon the enemy than is suffered by their retaliation. It is not pleasant for a visitor to, be sin one of the frimfc trenches at Fricourt. "Jdou'l think ■'me will linger here," said