ENGINEERS’ WAR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20130, 27 December 1939, Page 7

ENGINEERS’ WAR

SAPPERS IN FRANCE WORK ON DEFENCES MAGNITUDE of task LONDON, Dec. 5. The Royal Engineers are doing a bigger job of work than any of the King’s soldiers now on French soil, writes a correspondent from the Western Front. With enthusiastic engineer officers I waded knee-deep in the sodden clay of a potato field in order to see how their material was being used.

They showed me strong-points, section-posts, trenches, dug-outs, billets, roads, draining systems, lighting arrangements, and transport lines —all of which could not have been brought into being without these engineers, who have been slaving day and night for the past two months without a murmur. Concrete Pillboxes Indeed, all were smiling to-day as they worked boring machines, whose wells will supply the Army with sweet water from the unpolluted depths below mud and clay, and mixed concrete for the bewildering number of pillboxes they are erecting along the front, support and reserve lines. Each pillbox requires skilful factory layout. Gravel and sand must be mixed, trucked to the pillbox, hoist--3d up a staging of iron pipes, and emptied into the great wooden framework within which iron rods skeleton the finished form, and large steel plates mark the firing apertures. Upon the excellence of these pillboxes depends far more than the fate of peasant lands in which they are situated, for if the Germans broke through here the whole campaign might well be theirs, and so all France. Trap-ditches For Tanks

Through water-logged fields I accompanied officers to watch machines excavating anti-tank ditches. As the clay was eaten away, gumbooted toilers rushed in with iron joists and steel mesh in order to make the ditch permanent. Excavators on caterpillar tracks moved forward, leaving a deep trap etched into the endless potato field.

The honours must go to the sappers, who are creating a whole series of works which will allow the infantry to hurl the Germans back if ever they attempt to storm the British Army's position. In the meantime, they, are making life for the troops tolerable and possible by building baths, _

The whole British sector should fairly bristle with- pillboxes before spring. They are being built in great groups. Like true craftsmen, the engineers take a genuine pride in their work, and are almost reluctant to halt for the midday meal of stew and tea, which if brought up in vacuum containers from the kitchens in the reserve lines.