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IN THE WAKE OF THE ADVANCE

CLEARING .TIP THE BATTLEFIELD.

Clearing up a battlefield after an .attack , is not-'a pleasant' job : (writes Sydney'Howari ia the "Daily-Mail"). Wβ had.wrested a line of trenches from. the . Germans, and tho fighting hadl beomheavy. I went into a German' dug-out'in the rubbish-filled gutter to which our "heavies" had reduced the original German front line. Three or our poor lads had crawled down thero to die- out of reach of the shells, and ha 3 spent their last.paiii-wracke'd hours in comparative safety. In tho farther corner a man eat on. u, box, with his head resting on his hands. Ho was a German, stone dead, although I saw no wounds. Then the (Batch I had struck flickered out, and I turned to- ascend the debris-strewn steps to tho trench. Ihere was a twilight at the foot of .the. stairs, and I saw, on a bench : a photograph and a German soldiers'magazine. I took them from that cavo of death, and examined them in the clear smilight 'of the troiicli;'; : T.he. magazine interested) mu little, as 1 cannot read... German. The photograph portrayed "Landsturmmami (Reservist) A. Langc,"-. according to "Meine Adresse," written on the reverse side,'and his -wiife and.child.

At my feet lay a dead -German. From.tho ;positionMn which I had found 'the': photograph I tried .to reconstruct Hie--story. The Landsturmmanii had been-in tho dug-out looking at the portrait,-, when t.hV British barrage descended upon tho trench with tho, abruptness, of a- thunderbolt. ' TheLardsturmmann had placed the precious photograph , on the bench, seized. Ins riHe, and hurried into the trench to do his duty by the Fatherland. Was the:dead man A. Lango? Perhaps A. Lango, as so many of his cornfades did that morning, , emptied his. rifle at tho. advancing British," threw, his hands up and cried "Kamerad," and is now in clover in Blighty: But. if ho had biten captured I think ho :\vould have'begged and obtained that' photograph, for to a soldier the por-. trait of loved ones is dear, and! is the last possession) ho will part with. Yos; I think Fato was stern with A. Lnnge.

I looked at the dead Gernian at my feet. This man had died as becomes a soldier. He had been firing over the parapet when the. hIirII splinter that had smashed his boad cairie. Hβ had collapsed into the trenefi. . His right arm was raised as. though to protect him from fcho fatal steel; still clenched 1 in the dead fingers of his left hand was a. clip of cartridges, half withdrawn from the leather ammunition pouch. • ■ ■■ ■

Not a pretty picture—but War!

There- were too many -of my comrades lying dead for me to sentimentalise over a German,.who had, very possibly accounted for some of them. But perhapfi,--,ifter all, Lnudsturmraann A. Lango's tragedy is tho greater. My eomrados pave their lives for the Great. Truths of what ono of A. Lnnge's compatriots called "tho religion of nil puor devils." And ; these truths are worth dying for. ' . A. Langfi met his death defending not his wife and child, but the abomination of German "knltur," In ono sensir ho is a victim of Germany's rotten philosophy as tragio as.a Belgian child crucified on a barn door by A. Lange's compatriots.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19181001.2.93

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 5, 1 October 1918, Page 9

Word count
Tapeke kupu
542

IN THE WAKE OF THE ADVANCE Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 5, 1 October 1918, Page 9

IN THE WAKE OF THE ADVANCE Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 5, 1 October 1918, Page 9

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