FROM THE BIG BUTTLE,

Hokitika Guardian, 9 August 1918, Page 3

FROM THE BIG BUTTLE,

(Somewhere in France.) “They’re off!” It sends a thrill through you as you hoar this cry and rise up and find yourself in a crowd of men, pausing a moment to light their pipes and cigarettes and then hurrying forward with glistening steel in their hands to meet the foe. If it were not for these other men moving along, heavily laden, to keep pace with the barrage, one might well stand in amazemnt at a wilderness suddenly become crowded with swaying humanity, .bravely attempting to weather the storm of the Furies.

The big guns roll like heavy thunder, the’little field batteries answer with a bark. Shells scream, whistle, howl according to their mood. The quick staccato cojpghing of machine guns goes on unceasingly all around and is swallowed up in its own echoes There is a spatter of rifle bullets and the ping of snipers. You can almost feel the hot breath of shells and (bullets ns they whiz by, and you marvel that you are untouched. Barbed wire tears your clothes to pieces; mud sticks them together again Birds fly at your feet, and from the sky big-winged aeroplanes swoop down. Spitfire tanks plod on behind, erashing/and crushing. Boiling and burning oil sends flames leaping to the clouds; molten phosphorus is poured into dugouts. There is gas to blind or choke

There are laughs and cries—the laugh of a comrade as he struggles on, or the cry of another as lie drops his rifle and puts his hand to his heart. There is the yell of the hunter, the wilt} despairing cry of the hunted. The plonk of mortars and the burst of bombs add to the tumult of the storm. Stretcher-bearers rush to and fro, “runners’” zig-zag across the battlefield with their messages. Then you drop into a shell-hole, the sweat rolling off your face and breathe. Compasses out, direction adjusted and when the barrage lifts you dive into the tornado again—and go on.

' Germans are scarce; they are down below. “Moppors-up” behind will deal with them. Over broken trenches and torn ground slipping, falling, sprawling you go for your objective As the curtain of fire passes over tho village you make the final spurt forward — and “dig like hell.”

The noise increases, the guns Ret more angry, shells and showers of mud and dirt are everywhere. The devil seems to be raking mat his furnaces, the sky seems to crash down upon you, your head swims, your arms fall to your side, your logs go limp, you drop down.

~And when you open your eyes you find yourself on a canvas stretcher with a bandage round your head and another round your leg, and someone with a smile all over his bronzed face offers you a cigarette.—A .W.