SOMME GERMANS’ SKILL.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 January 1917, Page 3

SOMME GERMANS’ SKILL.

Picked Fden in Line. (From AY. Beach Thomas.) With the British Army in the Field, Nov. 3

The German, with his ally the mud, is fighting a skilful and determined battle to hold us off from striking distance of his main line of defence in front of Le Transloy and Bapanme. He has brought up picked troops and scattered the intervening spaces between our lines and his main defences with pits and fragments of trench ingeniously connected with places from which reserves can be hurried up or retreat effected. By a converging attack on Saturday some of our county troops, assaulting side by side with the French, took valuable ground east of the notorious “Hazy ” Trench, and have made good the ground. We have here won command of the desiied ridge. Farther west all tho way to the Butte de Warlencourt (southwest of Bapanme) tho Germans have thrown in fresh divisions to deliver counter-attacks at any threatened spot. Nevertheless, now and again they are caught napping. For example, two days ago a British battalion was ordered to take an important section of trench before a certain hour the next day. A regimental officer at once set out to review the position : for of all the problems before au attacking party the hardest in this shapeless contour is to recognise the objective even when you have reached it.

Well covered by the darkness the scout waded forward from shell-hole to shell-hole, having only one fear that the suction of his boots in tho mud would give his presence away. But the course was clear —so clear that lie found himself at last right up against the flimsy parapet of the trench he sought. It would be a pity, he thought, to go back emptyhanded now he liad come so far, so he slipped into the trench (which “ the caretaker and his wife ” had temporarily left), discovered an unguarded machine gun, took it from its stand, and returned “home” with hia souvenir. His .report and his booty were so attractive that an assaulting party was at once formed, the trench attacked in some force, and the whole occupied and consolidated with no more than twelve casualties. Heavy counter-attacks (possibly organised - by an officer who did not wish his default known) were that night delivered and easily repulsed.

Such is the nature of this war. Hundreds of men may lose their lives in almost unnoticed engagements, in attacks, or in dull, stagnant fighting, without definite issue, without a single incident salient enough to tell or remember; and then a company or so may win an invaluable position with the smallest cost in men, in nerve, or in material. It has been so ever since July I—the greatest fame often won by regiments who have suffered least,' while next to nothing is heard of those who have endured and sacrificed most.

THOUSANDS OP HUN BODIES. As to the Germans, they are living and have been living for weeks in a continued state of obscure sacrifice. Tens of thousands have been knocked out by shell fire before they have fired a shot and thousands now lie in front of us, the victims of brave but vain counter-attacks, shattered more than once, perhaps, by the mere spectacle of the dead whom the assaulting party had to pass, One particular German dressing station there is through which the stream of wounded never cease* to flow, day after day, probably also night after night. We can see the stream by day and infer its presence by night. On both sides tho nights are on the whole busier than the days, thanks to the tactics of the German guuners. They' fear to fire by day in face of our Argus airmen, in. planes or kite balloons, and our artillery observers on the ridge, and have come to adopt the principle of blind firing at night. A considerable number of batteiies arc exclusively night birds in certain sections of the line, and these use all manner of shells.

Of course, the day. shelling is considerable in places and at times ; and high-velocity naval shells are fired promiscuously at ranges up to fifteen miles; but where our observation is good the lulls are wide and long by day, and our batteries often thunder unanswered. Ah night the duel is more equal, and the owls play their part with smaller risk, if less effect.

GROUND LIKE GLUE. But the mud is still the cardinal enemy. It is more dominant and has a worse character, if possible, thau the German. It is no longer good, honest mud, but chemical glue —* man-lime smeared wherever troops move or flock. Yet in spite of all nothing disturbs the routine of the fight. One day last week the enemy counter-attacked us vehemently at the time when a relief was iu full progress; but bis onset failed to arrest or alter the arrangements in any single detail. Throughout the affair the new arrivals continued to take up their places and the old garrison to file off as if nothing unusual were takingplace. It was all in the day’s work, like relieving sentries at Buckingham