HAIG'S SURPRISE

Hokitika Guardian, 28 January 1918, Page 4

HAIG'S SURPRISE

HTJNS CAUGHT DURING A relief.

(From George A. B. Dewar.) Wa a Co i: rt ksi«ov i » kvts ’ Hba i» q t:a i:t e rs, France, Nov 21

The fight on Friday night just north of Passchendaele w is of the kind known as "a nibble.” There is authority for that expression ; besides, it is the vogue, so we must all adopt it. I suggest, however, that nibbling on this front of fronts implies an unusually vigorous effort of mastication and the swallowing of a quantity of blood. This is true of Friday night’s work, when Scottish and other troops took Vocation Farm and improved our line near by. They were in this instance unassisted by a barrage fire, and they lell upon the enemy just as he\vas» being relieved. That, of course, is one of the happy moments for an assault and surprise ; it suggests, as a rule, the infliction of extra casualties and confusion of the force attacked. The whole affair was clearly a minor one in this mighty wrestle for the dominating ridges that has been going on for many weeks past, but it seems to have been adroitly and precisely carried through. It covered only a small front, but it served substantially to round off the corners of our last big affair at Passchendaele.

111 these . nibbles we nowadays seldom bite off more than we cam chew, and there is a virtue in that which even strategists at home who profess themselves “fed up” with small successes will assent to. ABOXIINABT.K DESOLATION. I went for a walk yesterday in, roughly, the neighbourhood of the struggle, and after floundering and sliding along greasy planks and among the shell-holes off the tracks for an hour or two, I reached the conclusion that nothing which has been written about the difficul ties of the ground and the quality and quantity of the mud has been in the least exaggerated. You could not exaggerate the thing;

■ rt > the utter beastliness of it, even in the condition I found it yesterday, when it was only about normally bad for Passchendaele mud. One found oneself longing tor the flies of Udine in August, or the Arctic air about Fort Vaux last Januarj\ It is infinite slush and mud, with twisted fragments of horrible rubbish scattered in the "spaces among the shell-holes wherever there is a space big enough to hold anything.

This really is the abomination 6f desolation, and I believe we must be reaching the limit of badness in slush and mud which weather and war can inflict on troops. And in those conditions the fighters fight and the pioneers strive with their picks and. shovels, and the A.S.C. bring up the ammunition and the food with a great heart. I believe implicitly that there is more human brotherhood in a little pill-box anywhere in this battle area to-day than in a score of professional brotherhood and sisterhood societies in secure times and cosy places.

I crawled into one of these pillboxes in the afternoon—about the simplest bit of architecture imaginable, but of vvliat immense resisting power! This pocket Hercules of a fort was capable of housing, I suppose, half-a-dozeu to ten souls, if packed tight enough together, and with space still to spare for a couple of machine guns and some ammunition. Lite in such a spot, with shells more or less continuously bursting around, life in a lodge in the wilderness like this for, say, four days at a stretch is primitive. The Stone Age man whose flaked flints lie in the gravel drifts at home would not learn much about the arts of creature comfort and what we call civilisation could he return to life and lodge for a few days in one of these blockhouses on the right side of the battle-line, but he would learn more about good fellowship and endurance than a lifetime in a city could teach him.