BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1646, 5 December 1916, Page 4

BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES

It is always useful and interesting to learn something of what is going on in Germany. It is astonishing how little wo do really know of happenings behind the battle lines bristling with cannon and machine-guns. Occasionally American and other neutral writers who have travelled in the country try and lift the veil, but more often than not we do not believe what they tell ns! Whether we credit them or not, some of the reports are til any rate decidedly interesting. One such is contributed to Current History by Cyril Brown, the correspondent of The New York Times in Germany. He visited the enemy lines in Picardy, and writes of what he saw there: —

“The battle of the Somme, as I have seen it from the German side, is replete Avith impressions of cannonading of incessant violence, cyclones of steel, and sudden squalls of lire that wipe out whole villages in minutes, the hail of a thousand tornadoes criss-crossing the ruined countryside, ammunition that makes the mounds Avhieh 1 had seen til Verdun look like ant hills, mortar batteries as thick as mushrooms, and then the singing, cheering procession of tloAver-gar-lancd youngsters and the silent tramp of the rested veterans, .and the motor pilgrimage of pain intermingled with strings of ambulance loaded to capacity. Tt is just bke other battles, except that ou the Homme you cannot get away from it. It haunts you Avhile you are being kept aAvake by the French airbombs, folloAVs you into the trench, is with you in the high tree-tops and aeroplanes and other high observation points. Bielorially here is the same old front Avhieh has been seen and described to a point of boredom, but Avith a new sensation —the tingling realisation that here on the Somme front the flower of the manhood of three nations is locked in a death grapple, lighting for the decision of the Avorid Avar, that, it counts more men and guns, more shells quid dead and mangled to the front foot than any battle in history.”

Reporting with the Germans, he says, is no longer a pleasant pastime, owing to the manner in which the French ii iers drop bombs at night. In the village where he was quartered, almost every street had red signs put up headed, "Protection from Fliers,” and pointing the way to the nearest bomb-proof cellars. The mournful wail of a German military siren heralded the approach of the aeroplane at night.

“As the booming German antiaircraft guns went into action one had the novel sensation of lying abed and through a window seeing the lire points of German shrapnel bursting about the Hash of the French aircraft, momentarily caught by the German searchlights, hut feeling reasonably safe, as the French night-moths generally attack railway stations.

“I dropped into a hospital tilled exclusively with allied wounded, the local Palais do Danse, whose mirrored walls multiplied the misery ad infinitum. . . Across the s( reel, at the hospital for Germans, motor ambulances arrived in a steady procession. The wounded were carried in at one- door and the dead out another, while the French townspeople looked on with ill-concealed hatred.”

lie comments on the manner in which the Germans utilise every square inch of arable land in France —right up to the grim line —for the raising of crops, which he watched being garnered in by French civilians and German reservists. “Motor anti-aircraft gnus almost as thick in the fields as the Ameriican harvesters, indicating the heightened French aortal activity on the Somme, where the French and English Hying corps appear to he at the very top of their form.

That, the (ioniums are ol't'iciont evervone now admits —oven if they regard it as part of that hated Prussian militarism we are out to destroy—hut efficiency could hardly go further than this: — “Still another phase of the food ■war is to l)e seen here at the front. The aristocratic old colonel showed me part of Ins regimental piggeries, ten very fat, grunting hogs, so busy calling that I hey paid no attention to the correspondent or the* French shells howling overhead. The titled swineherd told me that each German company tit the front now has a troop of ten hogs to cat Tip its food scraps.*'

Owing to the constant interruption of the telephone wire? by the continuous bombardment, the Germans use pigeons extensively as despatch carriers.

“These unneutral birds are carried in crates into the front trenches at night, and principally used when the drumfire has destroyed the telephone wires, thus making impossible all other means of getting messages back to the division headquarters. It is in these times that the carrier pigeons prove of the highest military value, winging their ■way swiftly and surely through the shellfire. And though the casualties are heavy in the pigeon corps Germany’s pigeon reserves are said to be inexhaustible. The carrier 'pigeons are also used for transmitting despatches and particularly photographic films from aeroplanes operating over the allied lines. For the latter purpose a neat little leather harness, wifh a long, slender, tube, is attached to -a band under the pigeon’s body.” He notes that absolute military (order and discipline prevailed in the

currier-pigeon pump, where each (her hud a metal number fastened about its ncek, and was resting inside a numbered ovate! lie mentions the significant tael (hat uniformed labourers were engaged behind the front, laying line after line of Held fori ideations. They were digging and delving, he says, as it against time, “for the Germans, while not admitting the necessity, are nevertheless preparing to defend every foot of French soil by a stand every few hundred yards or so.” “ 1 joined the gunners at a kicking and snorting mortar battery, consisting of four giant bucking bronchos of steel, which threw up iludr tails viciously at every shot, and pawed the runaway with their caterpillar feel. Salvos were being tired on scelidnle time, one salvo a minute. Si an,ling dircetly behind the first mortar and looking about 200 yards up into the air, I saw the heavy projectile in High! at the start of its journey, visible for just a few seconds. Timing the propeetile, 1 found it was lifty-nine seconds before it was heard to burst at its destination. . . . The faces

of the German gunners told their own story. The good nature of those skilled Teuton mechanics had giveu place to a grim, set expression as if biting their jaws together and nerving themseh’es to light oil the physical fatigue of long weeks of coatinued cannonading. In their shirtsleeves and perspiring, Avith facial muscles drawn and strained they reminded me of overstrained athletes toAvard the end of a hardfought long-distance race, who realised that they must not “crack” before breasting the tape. They continued Avorking (heir battery automatically, with the disciplined perfection and linished form of veterans."

He round tlio men hack of the Iron I living in galvanised zinc sheds, semi-cylinders about ton feet, in diameter, easily transportable, quickly set up, absolutely rainproof, and resembling miniature models of the Zeppelin hangars. F.ight men can sleep beneath the zinc dome. Mr Brown considers that in no lighting arm on the Somme froth,, can either side claim marked ascendency. As is natural, being only able to see the German lines, he writes favourably of the enemy situation in Picardy, llis view that equality exists in the air is hardly being borne out by actual happenings.