"A WOOD OF DEATH"

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2350, 5 January 1915, Page 5

"A WOOD OF DEATH"

HORRIFYING SIGHTS \ THE ATTACKS ON YPRES *>: We hear of the heroism of war, and oux soldiers, gay as ever, give the fighting its salt of humour, writes W. Beach! Thomas in the "Daily Moil," under. ; date, November 15. Between thejino . deeds and merry! .words tK£li(>n,ars~Brain part omitted. But'it iS riot" .tf&l to 1 forget, that war is war. If we do we, certainly shall not know what the fight-; ing of tho last fortnight has been on tho . terrible battlefieldis' Of/'YpreKT'iWhab. men i here have endured to suffer those at home must endure to hear. . • . /■' " The greatest cf our recent successes has been the clearing of the enemy out; of tho woods) many of them of young trees and scrub, 'north of Ypres. They,/, were doggedly held for a long time; and porsistently attacked. This way] and'that way tho fight. 6waycd, till a final hour when two bodies of our in- ; i'antry advancing from different angles,,' and fighting with th 6 • bayonet, swept. through and killed every man. who held' his ground. . . When the work Wa6 over the men, .' after the established oustom of thisj war, turned to the task of digging' themselves in atvthe selected places.| The first rough trenches zigzagged irt'; the usual manner like battlement audi embraeuro. ■ . • . ' *

' lie work took some two hours, and:; the men were able to rest in 1 temporary;, fecurity. When night fell some origin-' eers who had been resting further back!; during tho day and had not joined in' the attack were sent for to fix barbed 1 wire and help to turn those rough! trenches into living-places: to drain the bottom with a sunk lino of 6tones, to j cut the two steps and slope tho sides—« steep at tho back, more sloping in front/! Ono of the§o engineers—a man whose; plucky services have procured him pro-' motion, who has seen moving' sights' enough to harden any sensibility—; stopped as he began to enter the wood under such a, sense of horror as paralysed his mind and his limbs. Heoould! not go forward or uack. Tho trees were filled with tho strange light of winter evenings, and wherever he looked he saw the forms and tho 'faces of tho dead in number multitudinous. Tho ground was strewn, almost boapcd, with forms, in every attitude, each twisted into horriblo grotesquohoss by tho . waning light. , When the wind wailing through;.■the branches brought down one of the relia leaves of a 'pestilence-stricken multitude," which brushed against his clothes like a great moth, he trembled like a fightenea child; at last, when from, the haunted shadows a thin voice called for .water,' his spirit was quito. daunted'and power of movement quite abandoned him. He could not move.

When, later, free of tho wood, he was busy at the dangerous game of fixing an entanglement of wiro before the trenches, he felt in a haven of safety. (This is no dccoratcd picture, but th< bare experience of an unsentimental Soldier promoted for nervo in face ol danger.)' ,It is a thing almost beyond belief thai men can endure what on the evidence of this wood tho Gormans have endured In these bayonet charges quarter is noi afked or given. Tho ground is bur dened not with wounded but with dead and those who advance against ou: trenches have almost always to male, their Way over swathe of tjieir fallei fellows. Their losses have often been a; fifty to one, and tho men. who so suffe: aro fighting with'littlo hope, cortainl; with no enthusiasm. The battle of Ypres has been for u the bnttle of tho war. The result is--for the Allies, a fow miles gained ant great losses; for the enemy death be yond reokoning find a defeated dream.