A WAR STORY

Hokitika Guardian, 19 September 1929, Page 2

A WAR STORY

THE 409t1i. (LOWLAND)* vv FIELD COMPANY, R.E., AT THE SOM-BRE-OISLEi QANAk ™

In the last, battle von the Western Front, the 409th (Lowland) .Field/Company of the Royal -Engineers bridged the Sambre-Oise canal at a lock about a mile south of There was an unfbrdable stream on either side of the canal so that the task was a particularly arduous one. uur artillery barrage came down at 5.45 a.m. on November 4, 1918, and detachments of the 409th Field Company advanced in front of the attacking infantry of the Ist Division. The sappers carried bridges 16ft. long for the passage of the streams and others, 23ft. long, for the canal lock crossing. On the way .the parly carrying one bridge were nearly all killed or wounded by a German shell. The enemy fire was heavy, and there were only enough men left to this whole detachment to carry two bridges forward to the first stream. Here barbed wire, roofs, unci fallen trees made- it difficult to find a suitable site.

Soon arrived: another party bringing two of the short bridges, which were also placed across 1 the . stream, the sappers wading in up to their waists to do so. The work was finished under showers of bombs thrown by Germans still holding, a house near the lock; but the infantry were soon able to cross and settle this opposition. Sappers and infantry now assembled at the lock and the former worked so well that four long bridges spanned, the canal here within half an hour of the start of the operations. A little later two more were in position. It was an easier matter to reach and bridge the stream east of the canal. The field company next searched the lock and buildings neat for German mines; then with the help of transport drivers of the 2nd Royal Sussex Regiment and of men of a trench mortar battery and the Ist Australian Tunnelling Company, they got forward to the lock two pack-transport bridges. These were in use at 8.30 a.m., by which time the 409th Field Company had lost half its bridging detachments killed and wounded, including all four officers.