CLEARING THE BATTLEFEID.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 October 1918, Page 3

CLEARING THE BATTLEFEID.

The attack has progressed. and salvage parties follow on the heels of trie infantry supports to clean m> the battle field. Matorial to the value of thousands of pounds is lying about ready to he collected by those battle-gleaners and used almost immediately against the enemy or sent to the base for repair.

The salvage party assembles in what was recently No Man’s Land, and €?i.s divided into squads. Each squad is tietailed to recover different material; one reclaims rifles, another bombs, a third equipment and a fourth machine guns. The officor in charge drives a number of wiring stakes into the ground, each stake marking the site of a separate dump. All around is the desolation of war. A few hours ago these rubble-filled gulloys were German trenches, and the shreds of wire that mark tho site of tho onco formidable wire entanglements add further testimony to the work of the British barrage.

Bodies, equipment ,and rifles lie scattered everywhere, and the duck-walk track of the tanks is deeply imprinted on the muddy soil. One .salvage party clusters about two disabled tanks, until a Hun aeroplane suddenly appears. Men pause and look up. The intruder is just overhead when two British scouts swoop down on to him, but ho is clever. He loops and twirls adroitly; there is a “tut-tut-tut” of machino guns, hut the Bocho is unhit Away ne scuttles, outdistances his pursuers, and disappears over the horizon, vengeful “Archie” hursts trail ing in his wake. So far the work of the salvage men has been uninterrupted. The enemy has been too busy getting his guns hack to shell the. old battlefield; hub perhaps the prying plane has seen a target worthy of a disengaged battery? A wise sergeant wtihdraws the party from the tanks. “We’ll let them bide a bit,” he says. Hardly have the men moved away to pick up other salvage when shrapnel clouds hurst over the tanks and _ the bullets clatter against their steel hides. All day the battle-cleaners work and thb dumps grow in size. The officer keeps tally, especially of the German salvage, so that Corps Headquarters may know how many rifles and machine guns can be claimed as “captured.” The worst task is burying the dead, but at last this is done and it is night when the*men assemble to march away.