THE N.Z. DIVISION

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 504, 10 February 1920, Page 2

THE N.Z. DIVISION

RECORD OF HEROISM. The following are further extracts from "The New Zealand Division," by Ex-Second-Lieutenant 0. E. Burton, M.M., M.d'H., on sale at "The Bookery," King Street, Pukekohiy. Price, 2s per copy.

The Somme. There was a great glow of feeling —a mood of exaltation. The New Zealanders had come to France with a great reputation from Gallipoli. They had shown on the battlefield of the Somme that the reputation was one they could live up to. The New Zealand Division had been a tower of strength on the right hand and on the left, and on the right hand were the British Guards. From the time of the Somme the New Zealand soldier took an undisputed place as one of the finest fighting men of the war. The first Somme was a great shock battle. Massed guns were countered by massed guns, infantry division was flung against infantry division. The enemy were strong, well led, well organised and determined to maintain an unbroken line. Progress could be made only by hard fighting, and even then progress was necessarily very slow. Magnificent as the New Zealander is in open warfare, he is nowhere better than in the shock battle. His ability to take punishment, his steadfastness, endurance, and cool, desperate dari ing have never shown out more splendidly than on this great oeca- , sion,

Ypres. Ridge after ridge, the wilderness stretched back frorri" St. Julien and Pilkem to. Polderhoek and Passchendaele, and from Messines on the one side to the forest of Houlthurst on the other.

The battlefield of Ypres! It is a dreadful place, a waste of desolation, hideously bare of all comfort, with no beautiful or decent or pleasant thing anywhere to be seen. It is a field of agony and death. No place on earth has been so desecrated by slaughter, no place save Calvary so consecrated by sacrifice. In this ravaged field has been sown the seed of the Internationale. Through this Valley of the Passion, Christendom has passed in victory along the high road which is leading onward to the City of God.

Passchendaele. The New Zealand Division placed the Second and Third Brigades in the line. Once more, in the cold dawn, the guns opened, but this time the thunder roll was absent. At the first discharge many of them slipped from the small patch of firm ground oii which they had been placed, and stuck fast in the mud. Few batteries had half their guns working at any time. Poor as the barrage was, the infantry could not keep with it. They had six hundred yards of bog to cross before they reached the slope and their first objective. This bog was a mass of shell holes with craters, and twelve feet deep. These craters were full of water. The advancing men floundered along the edges knee deep, sometimes waist deep in mud. The German machine-gunners, secure in their undamaged works, looked out, and, seeing their opportunity, took heart of grace. They swung their guns with terrible effect on to the struggling men in slough. Men slipped and fell and were drowned in the brimming craters, dragged down by the weight of their equipment. The machine-gun bullets claimed their victims by scores and hundreds, yet the stubborn battalions pressed on over the swamp, until the survivors were held up by the uncut wire. This could not be passed, and all the while the death hail rained upon them from the pill-boxes. With desperate valour men worked forward into the wire and tried to cut a way through for their comrades. They were shot down. Here and there a few crawled through, but they also were shot down. One man even gained the nearest pill-box and standing by the slit too close in to be harmed by the ru-e was in the act to bomb, when he was stricken down by a rifle grenade. Nothing that could have been done was left undone. The Germans kept their nerve, and the result was a massacre. For the first time in their lii.-tr>ry. Now Zealand Brigades had failed to take their objective, and their defeat had cost them as tragic a price as the barren victory on the blood-stained slopes of Sari Rair. The sufferings of the badly wounded were not so very terrible, for they died very quickly, choked in the slough or drowned in the shell holes. The Second and Third Brigades were utterly shattered, and were at once withdrawn. The First and Fourth held the line for a week until the Canadians came up from the south. Then the Division was withdrawn. It had won a great victory and suffered a great defeat..The ranks were terribly depleted. A short spell was absolutely essential to enable th; battalions to draw in reinforcements, reorganise, and reequip.

The N.Z. Y.M.C.A.

The Division detrained once more at Wizernes, and marched to the now familial Lumhres area. At the station each train was met by the New Zealand Y.M.C.A., and every man received hot cocoa and biscuits. The Y.M.C.A. had gradually become one of the main features of the Division. In Armentieres it was represented bv one man—J. L. Hay, an enthusiast, a tireless worker, and a man of vision. He made it go there. On the first Somme it flourished in the rest camp near King George's Hill. During the winter of 15)16-17 it crew find grew. How many men of that period have forgotten the hut of Sailly? On the Messines sector it extended its work. The Y.M.C.A. huts were the social centres, and the centre of intellectual life. The Y.M. was on the battlefield of Ypres. Tt was in the rest billets of Lumhres area. It had a genius for rapid improvisation, and was the most expert agency in France, for "souvenirinc" nnv+hing likelv to be useful to itself, and therefor? to the Diggers.

Limit of Endurance.

There is a limit to human endurance, and during the winter of 191718 this limit was very nearly reached. At no other time was the morale of the British Army so low. At no time was the war so nearly lost. It is impossible to fight, once the will

to victory has gone, and during this winter hope and faith in the final triumph almost died away. The terrible disaster before Passchendae'e, and the fearful price which had finally to be paid for it had disheartened so many. Then, too. it was obvious that, despite the tactical success, the strategic objective had not been reached. The German submarine campaign was being only too successful. Russia was disorganised and helpless. She was compelled to conclude a humiliating peace, which set free hundreds of thousands of German troops for the Western Front. The Italians met with a frightful disaster. The Battle of. Cambrai, so brilliantly successful in its earlier stages, closed badly after an immense sacrifice of life. The war was in its fourth year, and men everywhere were sick of the slaughter, home-sick, weary, worn out with the labour, disgusted with the sordiness and the naked, dirty horror of the wretched business. After four years of striving, victory seemed no nearer. Mentaliy, morally, physically, the ordinary man was done. He had reached his limit, and was ready to throw in the sponge and declare for a drawn fight. Nevertheless, even in the Ypres salient, there were men whose resolution no hardship or danger could shake. These men were the prophets and apostles of victory. Mud, filth, ugliness, and the comfortless desolation could not sour them, they smiled and kept their poise; defeat could not discourage them, they looked forward only to victory; the opposing numbers swelling daily did not daunt them. High of hope, strong in faith, death had no terrors, for men like these. It was nothing to these men if they died, if all the men of their race and time died, if only their dying brought Freedom and Hope to the suffering peoples of the world. In the blackness of despair they kept a flame still burning, a flame which in the months to come was to blaze up into a great light, chasing far the shadows and the darkness. These men won a victory which no historian will record, but a victory the hardest won of all—a victory which alone made possible the final triumph. Some were generals, soma officers, some N.C.O's, many privates in the ranks. Many are dead now, and many more maimed. Some have come home. Few of them received much in the way of reward oi- decoration. Such things were kept for those who took part in the spectacular but infinitely easier Victory Offensive of the last few weeks of the war. Yet all honour to the great-hearted few who endured so stoutly and valiantly when all artunii was despondency and despair.

News of Disaster.

Men were looking forward to at least another fortnight of this pleasant rest, when of a sudden came the news of battle and disaster. On March 21 the Germans attacked on the Somme. The British line was broken, and the grey tide swept on over the old battlefield, aiming to capture Amiens, cut the railway communications, and then sweep on to the Channel Ports. The news of the disaster reached the Division. The Tommies had broken, and the New Zealanders were to be sent down to fill the gap. By i ail, by motor lorry, by forced march the Division was rushed down to the Somme. The sudden call was the best tonic that could have been given. The New Zealanders had to stop the rot and save the day. The task was a great one, an honourable one, and the spirit of the Division rose high as they tramped on hour ifter hour along the "pave" roads. Refugees were coming back sometimes with waggons piled high with their household stuff, sometimes with only a small bundle of clothes. They were weary and worn, and many of them very hopeless. They had left behind them the little homes they loved so much and were moving on where they knew not. The sight of these poor folk hardened the resolution of the marching men. The Hun should not pass. If no one else could stop him they would. Very early in the morning, March 25, the battalions were moving in the chill darkness. How tired every one was ! But still there was no stay. Hour after hour the steady tramp, tramp, tramp, along the high road ate into the tale of-kilometres. Dawn came at last, but still the weary columns went on and on. A short spell for a cold breakfast, and then once more the steady move forward. Men were tired and footsore, many almost dropping with weariness. Yet scarcely any one dropped out, the stronger took a heavier burden upon themselves, carried extra paniers, bags of rations, took a comrade's rifle, and the steady march went on hour after hour, until, early in the afternoon, the Division assembled in a large field, behind the village of MaillyMaillet, a hamlet some 20 kilometres from Amiens, and close to Beaumont Hamel. The rest was a very short one. An hour later the leading battalions were moving forward with intervals between the platoons.

The Germans, flushed with victory, had crossed the old battlefield. The leading troops had been assigned so many kilometres for that day, on the completion of which they were to be withdrawn and rested. They were pressing on eagerly to finish the remnant of their task. They passed the old German front line, they passed the old British line, and in high spirits set foot on what for four years had been inviolate soil. Amiens was before them —Amiens, which meant victory for the German arms; Amiens, which would give the supremacy of the world, and "Deutschland! Deutschland über alles." They were but a short march from the city of their desire. As they topped each rise, they looked with eager longing for the spiies and belfries of the famous town. The way seemed clear before them, when of a sudden there was a shout of alarm, shots, and the leading files of the German troops met the leading files of the New Zealanders face to face. The New Zealanders deployed out and attacked with the bayonet over green fields. The German advance guards were driven in, and the Division took up a line in the old trenches, which had not been used since the commencement of the British offensive on the Somme. This line had at all costs to be held. There was no further room for manoeuvre. Retreat meant disaster.

(Continued on Friday)