Pill-Box Fighting.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 10 January 1918, Page 4

Pill-Box Fighting.

—: V— THE NEW TRENCH SYSTEM. RETURNED OFFICER'S EXPERIENCES. An interesting story of the Passchendaele battle is related by an Aueltlnnder who returned with the hospital Miip. The preliminary operations presented an astounding example of the vast and thoroughly efficient organisation to which the" Imperial Army has attained. For days beforehand supplies of ammunition and food were coming in, the trains of mules being sometimes half a mile long. Every detail was fully worked out, and the advance was operated like machinery. The net result of the efficient organisation and splendid fighting power of our men was that we attained every objective, although the Germans were actually preparing for an attack at the same time as wc were. The German barrage, preceding their attack, commenced at 5.30 a|mj, while ours started just half an hour later. The attack was therefore a difficult one, for the Germans had massed their troops preparatory to launching their own advance, but the New Zealanders fought with irresistible determination and dash. As evidence of the intensity of the German fire, it is said that when Lieut. A. S. Reid attained his objective there was only about a third of his platoon left. One entire section (including Dave Galluher, the well-known New Zealand representative Rjigby player) was simply wiped out by a single big shell. Lieut. Reid with his men was held up by a hidden machine-gun and they took cover in a shell-liole. It was while trying to discover the whereabouts of the machine-gun that Lieut. Reid was shot through the right side of the chest. He was unable to go forward, but they had then attained to within a few yards of their objective—that is, the place' where they had to "dig in," and later he was taken back to the field dressing station. One of. the remarkable things noticed was the new system of /ighting-i^ 1 " 1- ' 11 in by the Germans, in which . are packed into "pill-boxes," that is very strong ferro-conerete structures, from which it is impossible to rout them without direct bomb-throwing. The bomb, however, usually did the trick, especially if it was one of the new bombs, which have the effect of setting fire to everything within the radius of their explosion. While it was a fact that many of the German prisoners who were coming in in great numbers were young and miserable-looking, there wero portions of the lino where the reverso was the case, and in these parts our soldiers had a hard battle to attain their objective.