A ZONE BETWEEN FIGHTING FRONTS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 147, 18 February 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

A ZONE BETWEEN FIGHTING FRONTS.

(BY PHILIP GIBBS.) General Headquarters. Two days ago I hau an adventure which still seems to me unreal and fantastic. I wont into a village held by British troops beyond our lines of trendies, with nothing dividing them from the enemy but a little undergrowth—and the queerot part of the adventure was the sense of safety, the ridiculously fal>e security, with which one couH wander about th<> village and up the footpath beyond, with the knowledge t! at one's movements were being watched by German eyes and that the whole place could be blown off the face of the earth . . . but for the convenient fact that the Germans who were living in the village beyond the footpath wore under our own observation and at the mercy of our own guns. To those who do not know at flr-t hand the conditions of life a'ong the greater part fo the Western front it is difficult to explain the of stupefaction with which I was filled in this extraordinary place. I have said that it is bevond our l : nes. After a familiarity with the pros salient and anywhere between the Yser Canal and the trenches at Xcuve Chapelle. for instance, that sounds like a fairy tale. To go over the parapet of the first line of trenches, even to put one's head up tor a s.ngl second, is to risk immediate death. One "asks for it," as the soldiers say. Beyond the first trench is the "dead ground, where no I'fe can exist. a blasted place. with a few huddled corpses, the churned-up earth of minecraters and shell-holes. There are listening-;, osts out there, dug underground. Occasionally at night bold men will c rawl out a little way on their stomachs, and lie "doggo,'' simulating death with a very earnest realism, surprised afterwards—if they have the luck to come back —that their pretence was not ma.de perfect by a sniper's bullet or a hit of shell. That is the familiar way of things in this war. and therefore when I say that there is one vi'lage thrust out beyond our trenctes with no barrier of earthwork between them and the enemy, I an; saying an astounding thing, hardly credible to soldiers who have not f-eew it. Needles; to say 't is not in the flat fields of Flanders, but where, m another part of tb<. line, men who have worked clown from the deadly salient of Ypres find hills again and valley roads, down which they may walk under steep bluffs, close but invisible to the enemy, and stand on high ground looking across to the enemy's trencnes a mile or two away, perfectly outlined as though by a brush of whitewash on a background of green slopes so that the veil which hides the enemy's position in Flemish fields is lifted at last, and the war-zone s a wide panorama across which one's glasses may sweep to watch the bursting siiells.. or villages where Germans live, or even, as 1 saw two days ago, German soldiers themselves, like littl* ru.t-s oil the fal ground. LET SI EEPIXG SHELLS LIE. 1 stood on a hill with a French lieutenant and one of his men. I'he de taclinient itself was some distanc.; away, but after an exchange of compliments in an idyllic g'ade, where .? little party of French soldiers lived in the friendliest juxtaposition with the British infantry surrounding them —it was a cheery bivouac among the trees, with the frag';.nee of a stew-pot mingling with the odcr of burning wvod — the lieutenant insisted upon leading the way to the top of the hill. He made a slight detour to point out a German shell which had fallen there without exploding, and made laughing comments upon the harmless, futile character of those poor Germans in front of u-s. They do their best to kill us. but oh. so feebly! Yet when I took a pace towards the shell lie called out sharply "Xe toi'.chez pas!( I would rather have touched a sleeping tiger than that conical piece of metal with its unexploded possibili- I ties, but bent low to see the inscrip- \ tions on it scratched by French gun- j ners with more recklessness of death. I " Mort aux Bodies" was scrawled upon ! it between the men's initials. TEMPORARY VILLAGES. Then we came to the hill crest and to the last of our trendies, and, standing there, looked clown upon two villages separated by a piece ol marshy water. In the farthest village were the Germans, and in the nearest, just below us. down the steep cliff, our own men. Between the two there was a narrow causeway across the marsh and a strip of woods half a rifle-shot in length. Behind, in a sweeping semi-circle round their village and ours, wore the German trenches and the German gun.s. I looked :nto the streets of both villages as clearly as one may see into Clovcl'y village from the crest of the hill. In our own village a tew British soldiers were strolling about. One was sitting oil the window-sill of a cottage kit king his heels. In the German village the roadways were concealed by the perspective of | the houses with their gab'cs and cliim- | ney->tacks. so that I could not see any j passers-by. But at the top of the road iroing out of the village and standing sutside the last house on the road was i solitary figure —a Gorman sentry. The French lieutenant pointed to thin mast awav from the village on the hil'.ide. •• Do you see? That is their fhgstaff. f'liey hoist their flag for victories. It wagged a good deal during the recent I! ussian lighting. But lately, since »ur advance, they have not had the .luck to nut it up." This cheery lieutenant laughed very lieurtilv at that naked pole on the hill. Then I left him and joined our own :nc:i, and '.vent down a steep hill path nto that strange village below, well Hit-ide our line of trenches, and thrust forward as an outpost in the marsh, ilcrir.an eyes could see me as I walked. At any moment tlie-e little houses ibout me might have been smashed inrubbish heaps. But no shell came ;o disturb the water-fowl among the •ec.L around. And so it is that the life in this placv. > utterly abnormal, and while the guns core silent except for long-range fire, in old-fashioned mode of war what :ho adjutant of this little outpost ea'ls i "gentlemanly warfaie" prevails.

Officers and men -loop within a few hundred yards of tho enemy. When a tight takes place it is a chivalrous excursion. such a> Sir Walter Manny wou'd have loved, between 30 or 10 men on one side against somewhat tho same number on tho other. Our men steal out along tlm eau«e- 1 way which crosses the marsh —a pathway about four foot wide, broaden 1 in: out in the middle so that a liti'o re- I doubt or block-hou-e is est ibl.shol j there, then across a narrow drawbridge, then along the path a<ra : n until i they come to the thicket which vrein- j the (Herman village. It sometimes happens, as the 111:01

night, that a party of Germans .vc creeping forward from the otlier iircction, id just the same way, disguised in parti-coloured clothes splashed with greens and browns and reds to make them invisible between the trees, with brown masks over their faces,. inea sucH- ny contact is made. " v Into the silence of the night come* the sharp crack of rifles, tiie zip-zip of bullets, the shouts of men who have given up the game of invisibility. It. was rcry sharp encounter the other night, and our men brought hack many German helmets and other trophies,ns proofs of victory. Then to lied in the village, and a good n'ght's rest, as when English knights fought the I'rench. not far from those fields of of that good story-teller Sir JohnFroissart. THUS FAR AND NO FURTHER. Two days ago I went along the causeway and out into the wood, where the* outposts stood listening for any crack of a twig which might betray a German footstep. I was startled when I came upon the men suddenly, plmost invisible against the tree-trunks. And there they stood motionless with their r:Hos ready, peering through the brushwood. It I had followed the path on which they stood for just a little way I should have wa'ked into the German village. But, on the other hand, I should not have walked hack again. When I left the village, and climbed up the hill to our own trenches again, 1 laughed aloud at the fantastic visit, to tin; grim little outpost in the marsh. If a l l the war wore like this it would br- a " gentlemanly" business, as the officer remarked.