THE WAR MACHINE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2963, 29 December 1916, Page 5

THE WAR MACHINE

WHAT AN ADVANCE IS LIKE

(By an Officer-Correspondent in the . "Daily Mail.") '"•■ For a lifetime the chaotic song of our guns has been ringing'in my ears. It-is a song of supreme! violence—one that plays upon our emotions as no composition on earth has ever done ' before ; filling one with supreme confi- •\ denco in this the Great Adventure of our lives. You at home who have > created tho wondrous instruments of this infernal orchestra may' be proud of your 1 handiwork. They are the groat things, of this great war. I have been asked a soore of times . what it feels like to be in;an advance. At first one thinks of . few things but the music of the guns which pave the way to victory. Wo poor infantry mortals are very small fry in these . affairs of iron gods. And from what I havo seen of the enemy after our assaults, tho majority of-them are reduced to the state of the merest worm. 'We are given a task. We pore over, maps and make precise calculations. - Wo become more.: and more important as the. day approaches. We take up our positions with a consciousness that a big task—a juggle ■. with death—lies ahead. That is the time when we think—of England;.of home; friends. Here there is nothing but devastation/ villages flattened till there is not one stone upon aai- ' other,' a wrecked country churned up by shell fire; blasted and devastated. England with her smiling countryside knows, no such tragedy of destruction v as this; and from the ruined land comes the incessant song of gnns. . One thinks hard in tho. midst of tliiSi chaos. . t . , j The War Machine. I can,only speak for myself, but I know that during the days of preparartion ' and the final, hours /of-waiting for ■ "zero" time a was inspired by a feeling of supreme confidence in our war machine. It .was half the battle. "The night before" I dined with the Colonel, who was to lead us on the'morrow. He was a north country doctor before the war,: and for seventeen months he had led his. battalion—most of the time through perilous days in the Ypres salient, including the second battle of Ypres. Never has the Territorial system turned out a finer soldier—a hard, business-like, inspiring leader, of men. Someone .asked him what ho thought of the prospects of. our attack. "We shall; do. well;" lie said,with _absolutely,firm conviction in hisJ Voice; andnever did men do better than those ho " led a few hours afterwards, to a glorious victory. It is confidence in the machine which' 'inspires companies- and battalions, brigades, and divisions and corps. In the , hours of waiting we were joined by the "Land Devils"—officially , known as "tanks.''': Tliey looked'so powerful, so diabolically dreadful, as they rolled * and wallowetf over our tranches in the f cold light of breaking, day, that we * were constrained to hold our breath y , with a.sort of suppressed ear. Wo knew some of the dashing dare-devils that manned these "Land Devils"; and I heard one.of our Tyneside lads.say: ' "The. old Boche will think he's 'got em' when he sees ;those tilings going over." And it was not long a'fter- - wards that the Boche did."see things," 1 for a .perfect firework .display, of red . lights .calling for an-artillery barrage went up from the German trenches when he caught sight of tho monsters. The Human Element. Thus the hours Polled on—hours that i were full of interest, and thrilling with ' new experience, till only moments were left to "zero" • time. Then came' the - :. song of our guns, the scream of thousands_ of shells being hurled through the ail',-and the dreadful upheaval of high explosives on what had been the ' German trenches. It was impossible to think or speak., Back came the reply of 1 the German guns.. Heaven and earth seemed, in an uproar—a storm and upheaval such as nature itself in its most . violent moments, had never- created. The roar and crash, flamo and smoke ' ) of : a rocking, giddy world gripped the mind as in a vice, banishing all individual thought of. life or death. And through-it all moments slipped - away to seconds, .till in' a flash there rose from the terrible welter a long khaki line of infantry,. which went forward .with steady, confident, irresistible step.. Intliose seconds of time the mindre- , gained it's self-possession. The machine ceasedto grip. The hujnan element was ■ greater than the machine inv this the supreme test. No doubt .the guns roared their wild and terrible song, but now they, were slaves, to this impetuous forward sweep of . men which no power on earth cojild h01d.'.,,

After Vlotory. There is a r yield of prisoners to be dealt with, trenches anddug-outs with their Boche inhabitants to be explored. There is_ elation in mastery.'and possession , joy that an7eiplbrer imist feel on' entering any new and uncharted land. _ The prisoners themselves' make us smile—they are so obviously glad to be prisoners, and to be . released from the hell in which they have been confined. But they are not sure of them- ! selvos or us. In a score of ways they try to exaggerate' the, ordinary signs of capitulation, all the time mounting the word, "kamorad." They require careful watching, do these slim Boohes; . and the tension between victor and vanquished is never relaxed. A thousand and.one things have to be done; and with new experiences in a new landthe hours slip by quickly. ,We look out upoll a new horizon of green fields and woodlandß_ dotted here and there with still-standing villages and ohiirch spires. We have gone over the brow of the hill, and we know that the Boche has receded into the distance,' giving us ■"room wherever we demand it. The country is tormented with, shell fire, but every trench and dug-oht yields souvenirs, and soon our lads, disregarding all danger, are dressing themselves up in the headgear of the Boche. The day requires no watches or clocks to help out its thrilling hoursbut evening shadows bring the inevitable mental and physical weariness, too overpowering to resist.'. •We snatch sleep . standing or, sitting in tbe lands that' last night belonged to the enemy. It is true we sleep one eye at a time, for ' vigilance is required; but wo know that behind us the inevitable war machine rolls slowly forward to our aid over the ground we have won.. And once again the never-failingmachine enfolds us in its all-iwwerftil embrace.