“PUSHING" IN THE MUD.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 October 1917, Page 1

“PUSHING" IN THE MUD.

It; isn’t, the foe that we fear; It isn’t the bullets that whine; It isn’t the business career Of a shell, or the burst of a mine ; It isn’t the snipers who seek To nip our young' hopes in the bun No, it isn’t the guns, And it isn’t the Huns — It’s the Mud, Mud, Mud. •

Robert \V. Service : “ Rhymes of a Red Cross Man.” Somewhere in “ Les Miserables ’ is a description that has often haunted me—a passage telling of a man who is swallowed in the quicksands., And sometimes 1 too awake from a, night mare in which f have felt the rising of the sand , in which, as Victor Hugo’s poor victim, I have gazed for the last time at the distant land with the sun shining on the hills and the seagulls swerving whitely overhead; in which I have struggled against that solid flood that creeps past my chin, my mouth, my nose. . . And yet the nightmare of the mud. is nearly as terrible. Can 3 T ou conceive it, you people who have never seen worse mud than one finds around the gates of fields in winter ! Can you imagine what is happening now in Flanders, with the men struggling through the slough, their haversacks

rubbing damply agaiust their sides, their dripping rifles grasped firmly in

their muddied hands ? The mud in summer rain is just as bad as the mud in the winter downpour—the

thousands of feet have loosened so

much dust, the shells have thrown up so much earth to be converted by the

first shower into a quagmire of clinging filth.

And through, it all there*'are the rations and ammunition, the shells and the guns to be brought up nearer the Germans. All night long, all

lay long, the peasants in the little

homes by the roadside hear the dull roar and deafening clatter of the heavy traffic creeping up over the

“ pave.” Now comes a line of limbers laden yvith biscuits and tins of meat and tea ; now a great howitzer, causing the whole earth to tremble as it rumbles by; now a battery of field guns comically small besides the heavies, with their caterpillar-wheeled tractors ; now a battalion of infantry, almost weai’y before its turn in the trenches begins. All ‘lav long, all night long, the peasants listen to this rattle and rumble.of war and wonder how the “ push ” will go. MIRACLE-WORKING TROOPS.

Heaven knows it is awful enough

in dry weather, this inferno of preparation for an advance. But when

the rain streams down and the grey clouds bang low, the deeds done by human beings become miraculous.

In No Man’s Land the shell-holes are filled with water, the mud-stretch bides the empty tins, the old sandbags, the strands of barbed wire that trip up the infantrymen, and the mud

itself clogs their steps so that they advance slowly, dragging their feet

ke old men

In the trenches, wet

ditches that cannot be properly drained, other men crouch down in

the rain among boxes of bombs and ammunition. They whisper, or pat, or fall into uneasy doze, waking suddenly with startled expressions—waiting, waiting for the time when they too will cross the swamp to the German trenches.

Along the roads the great weapons of war pass each other in the streaming night. The flare from a match lights up the sweating horses and wet faced men and is reflected dully by the grey gnus. In one place a huge tractor slips off the side of the ■‘pave” into the mass of mud, and

the traffic is blocked for a mile each way. One by one, lorries crawl ronud it, while, working parties of men •truggle in the darkness to heave the great engine on to the road again or to push it down altogether into the mud, when it may wallow like some antediluvian beast without delay to

the current of the traffic. But each minute miracles are accomplished. Each minute, in spite of water that, reaches to the thighs or rand to the knees, the work goes on. Through the murky night come the flashes of guns, the lurid glare of explosions, the sickly whiteness of the star-shells; through the awful day the men work on the trenches, the parties bring their boxes of ammuni tion up sticky communication trenches, the guns pour forth their death oti the battered dug-outs and shell-pitted roads. If an offensive is to he made it will be made. But to do it iu the drenching rain men will prove themselves

super-men and the clockwork of organisation will have to he the great machinery that tears on its way heedless of all obstruction.