The Counter Attack.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 13 November 1917, Page 1

The Counter Attack.

WHEN THE HUNS COME OVER THE TOP. "Over the top" is a phrase that is now a household currency. It expresses in terse soldier-language one of the most nerve-racking experiences it is possible to undergo. But that "ovor-the-top" feeling is nothing compared with the slow agonies—the prolonged nervous strain—of an unexpected enemy counter-attack. Before the attack is delivered the imaginative man undergoes moments of acute terror —terror not unlike that of a child cowering in darkness. He can feel the pounding of the eenmy's barrage long before it crashes across the parapet. He suffers that sensation of paralysis so familiar in dreams. lie stands riveted to the spot till the scorching bayonet, a grey ghost of his brain is tearing through his flesh. . . And yet the same man with calm courage "will unflinchingly expose himself and open rapid fire when the actual attack begins. It is a curious point in pschology. I have faced several counter-attacks, and my sensations were precisely the same on each occasion, says Mr Drysdale Smith in the "Daily Mail." There was first a waiting period of acute tension—of unconquerable nervous impotence and agony —whicli held me in its grasp, then vanished utterly. It gave place to a quaint sensation of excited curiosity and detachment from the events that were happening.

I recall the evening as if it were yesterday. The details are stereotyped on my brain. The sky was llcecy with white clouds. There was nothing in the •sun-baked stretch of the enemy's linos to indicate that he was massing witli fixed bayonets, four deep in his front line. But suddenly his guns opened, and shells of all calibres rushed through the air towards us, bursting close at hand and covering us with earth, small stones and sulphurous fumes. ADVANCING WAVES. For the next half-hour my eyes were glued to my periscope. I shall never forget that half-hour of vivid expectancy. I prayed for something to haplieart was thudding in my throat. . . . Should I be able to keep my legs firm when they came over. . . How would it feel when the bayonet was pushed into my body? . . . And, above all, what would happen if I lost the line? . . . . What would the men say, and the captain and the colonel and the generals? These were, the thoughts that courscd through my excited brain. Then tlio first wave of the expected counter-attack scrambled over the enemy's parapet. A thread snapped in my brain. I rapped out a fire order. A movement rippled down our line. My men were manning the parapet. ] dropped my periscope and stood up on the'fire-step. I felt no sensation of fear; only a vast and consuming curio ■sity as to whether the Iluus would reach our trench. The first wave advanced fully thirty yards before one of them dropped. A machine-gun crackled its staccato rat-tat-tat-tat . . . rat-tat-tat. . rat-tat and several others picked up the crisp cliorus. The leading wave still ran towards us. But in their centre a wide gap suddenly yawned. In.this gap the ground was strewn with figures; some of them squirmed and wriggled, others lay placid in death. . . The wave of men still rushed on. A second wave poured over the parapet of the enemy's trench.