German Trenches on the Western Front.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 227, 17 November 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

German Trenches on the Western Front.

Along many miles of the Western front, as it was till the end of June, you can now do what seems to trenchdwellers almost the utmost reach jf impossibility. You can stand at your ease in the middle of No Man's Land and look at a German front trench on your right and a French or British front trench on your left. As soon as you do so you feel that the outward face of each wears a quite different expression.

It is not merely the accident that the Allies' wire is only cut across by neat lanes or gangways at convenient intervals, while the German wire lies in a trampled mass on the ground. The difference goes much further. For one thing, the Allies support their barbed wire mainly with wooden stakes; the Germans do it with iron. For another, the Allies' parapet owes much more :>t its strength to visible sandbags. The Germans build with sandbags, too. but not so much nor so openly. Their parapet makes much more show of rough ciay or chalk, even where a light layer of this covers 2ft. or more of reinforced concrete, placed like a shrapnel helmet on the head of dug-out or a gun emplacement.

If you now leave your first standpoint and explore the two trenches .n turn, and also the support and communication trenches behind each, ot them, you find that the difference goes in more than one sense, deeper vtili The Allied trench looks, in every way, like the work of men who hoped and meant to move on before long; th 3, German trench looks like the work o ( ' ■tfnen who hoped, or feared, that they would be in it for years. Our trench housing has been much more of a makeshift, a sort of camping out, with some ingenious provisions fci shelter and comfort, but not more than the least that would serve. Most of orn 1

dug-outs are just roughly delved holes in the earth, with only enough pr ps and rafters to hold the roofs up ; their floors are bare ground, with a little straw on it ; their doors, if they have any, are a few odd pieces of plank with a couple of other pieces nailed across; often the floor is on the trench level, to save burrowing. Lighting is done with candles, mostly bought a.t the canteen, and if anyone owns an armchair or a two-toot-high mirror, it is the jest of the platoon.

ENEMY'S UNDERGROUND HOUSES.

Tho whole German idea of trench Hfo is different. The German front in the West is like one huge straggling village built of wood, .and strung out along a road 300 miles long. f)f course the houses are all underground. Still, they are houses, of one or two floors, built to certain official designs, drawn out in section and plan. Tho main entrance from the trench level is, sometimes, at any rate, through a steel door, of a pattern apparently standardised, so that hundreds may come from the factory on one ord.?r and missing parts be easily replaced. The profuse-ly-timbered doorway is made to their measure. Outside this front door you may find a perforated sheet of metpl. to serve lor a doormat or scraper. Inside. a flight of from 12 to 36 stairs leads down at an easy angle. The treads of the stairs and the descending roof of the staircase aiv formed of nvbiing frames of stout timber, with double top sills; the walls arc of thick planks, notched at the top and bottom to fit the frames, and strengthened witli iron tierods running from top to Irottoin of the stairs, and with thick wooden struts at right angles to these. At the foot of the stairs a tunnelled corridor runs straight forward, for anything ir.p to -10 yards, and out of these open rooms and minor pas-ages on each s,de. In many dug-outs a socond staircase, or two staircases, lead to h lower floor , which may be 30 or 4ft f.'et below the trench level.

All these staircases, passages, and rooms are. in the b,»s't specimens, completely lined with wood, and as fully strengthened with it as the entrance

staircase already described. In one typical dug-out each section of a platoon luid Jts allotted places for messing and sleeping, its own place for parade in a passage, and its own emergency exit to the trench. In another, used as a dressing station, there are beds tor 32 patients and a fair-sized operating room. A third, near Mametz, was designed to house a whole company of 300 men, with the needful kitchens, provision and munition storerooms as well, a forge riveted with sheets of cast-iron, an engine-room, and a motcr-room. Many of the captured dug-outs were thus lighted by electricity. In the officers' quarters there have been found full-length mirrors, comfortable bedsteads, cushioned armchairs, and some pictures. One room is lined with glazed "sanfTEiry" wallpaper, and the present English occupant is convinced by circumstantial evidenie that his predecessor lived there with his wife and child. Clearly there was no expectation of an early remove. LAVISH USE OF LABOUR. Other German trench works show the same lavish use of labour as the dug-outs. In the old German front trench south of La Botsselle an entrance like that of a dug-out leads to a flight of '24 stairs, all well finished At their foot a landing 3ft. square opens on its further side upon a nearly vertical shaft. Descending this by a ladder of 32 rungs you find a second landing like the first, opening on a continuation of the shaft. Down this ladder of 60 rungs brings you to the starting point of an almost straight, level tunnel 3ft. wide and about sft. high, cut for five or six paces through pure, hard chalk. It ends in a Wan l ; wall. If you take its bearings with the

compass, return to the parapet, and step 50 paces in the same direction is the tunnel, you will find yourself n a huge crater, which had evidentlybeen held, and probobly made, by British troops. So that, at the moment of tho advance in July, nothing remained, presumably, for the Germans to do but to bring the necessary tons of high explosive to the end of their tunnel and blow the mine under the base of tho old crater. Some ruugs of the ladders in the shafts are missing or broken, hut, as a whole, the. shafts and tho tunnel are remarkable for amplitude and finish. Like an incomplete dug-out near Fricourt, this mine still contains parts of the machinery used for winding up the excavated chalk to the surface.

Nobody who reads this should leap to the conclusion that, simply because Gorman trench work is more elaborate than ours, it is a better moans to us end—the winning of the war. No doubt the size and the overhead strength of Gorman dug-outs keep down casualties under bombardment, and sometimes enable the Germans <o bring up unsuspected forces to haras; our troops in the rear with machinegun and rifle lire when a charge has tarried our men past an uncleared dugout of tho kind. On the other hand, if our advance is made good every German left in such a dug-out will >e cither a dead man or a prisoner. No doubt, again, tln> German dugouts give more protection from very bad weather than ours. But they also remove men more from the open air. and there is nothing to show that the half-buried German army gains more by relative immunity from rheumatism and bronchitis than it loses in the way of general health and vitality. Tn England troops have better health in tents than in huts, and better health in huts than in billets. For a man of sound constitution "exposure" often means something unpleasant rather than unhealthy, and it would not be surprising if the close underground villages of the Germans yielded higher tigures of general sickness than our own simpler, shallower, and more airy trench shelters. - - The World's News."