“NO MAN’S LAND.”

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 55, 4 March 1916, Page 3

“NO MAN’S LAND.”

GERMANS ROB THEIR OWN WOUNDED.

THE LISTENING POST. The following dispatch has been received from the special representative of the British Press with the French Armies.—

Sunday, December s.—“No, Man’s Land” is all day long a bullet-swept desert, where no living thing can show itself and live, but as soon as darkness falls it becomes alive with grey, mysterious forms that glide to and fro in ghost-like silence. After hours of walking in the trenches —where, perhaps a mile or more behind the lines, all traffic passes below the surface for fear of the enemy’s shells —it is a strange and memorable experience to find oneself in the open, in the “No Man’s Land” between the trenches, with nothing but a narrow barbed wire entanglement and a screen of darkness between oneself and the Bcches only two hundred yards away.

At the particular point of the front which I visited yesterday the opposing trenches are from five hundred to a thousand yards ’apart.. The ground is very marshy,and it is impossible to push forward the lines, since any attempt to trench making is impracticable. THE APPROACH. The approach to this debatable ground is impressive enough.. First we passed through a ruined village, where not a light or a sign of life was to be seen. Barbed wire and walls of great stones, roughly piled together, trenches, and barricades have turned this village into a fortress. Never has town been laid out and planned with more thought and care, though chaos itself would seem order compared with that unhappy viTage. Every section of it is a centre of resistance, carefully devised to give a maximum of cover and capable of carrying on a defence even if all the other sections on either side were captured. Yet it seemed that an invisible army

must be protecting this point in the Great Wall of Civilisation; none of its defenders were to be seen. In the heart of the first line there is a trench which leads out in audacious fashion into the marshes, straight towards the German lines. We walked on wooden grating set high above the muddy water at the bottom of the trenches, and everything was silent with a sinister silence. A grey mist which had risen with the end of the short December day seemed to muffle every sound.

Wo followed this trench to an isolated block cf buildings, once a factory, some two hundred yards in advance of the French front trenches. These bindings had been mercilessly shelled, and looked as desolate and uninhabited as the ruins cf Pompeii, but our guide groped his way to a

doer, which was thrown open 'At his I knock. The dim light of a smoky

lamp showed a small and cosy shelter, dug deep in the ground and protected with sandbags and piles of debris. There were half a dozen men inside it —cheerful French cavalrymen, chasseurs ach eval —who were amusing themselves with a game of cards. At his officer’s order, the command-

er of the section, a gay, venturesome youth of just over twenty, came out to guide us to the postc d’ecoute, the advanced post where all night long the sentries strain their ears to catch a sound of the enemy’s movements. As soon as the first gleams of dawn appear they return hastily to the cover of the trenches, for delay means certain death. The trench we had followed still continued. It passed in complete blackness through the very centre of the factory, and as we passed we had

a dim impression of monstrous machines, half wrecked by the enemy’s shells, that loomed weird and menacing on either hand. Then, as we neared the marshes, the trench grew shallower and eventually came to an end.

IN THE OPEN,

We stepped out into the open, and

our guide warned ns to move warily and not to talk above a whisper. We set cut towards the German lines, with a hedge dimly visible on our right to guide us. Caution was necessary, since we had to find the gaps in the barbed wire—gaps that could be filled at a moment’s notice with chevaux de frise and movable barbed wire obstacles lying ready to: hand. In Indian fife, the four of us went forward until we reached the first pcste d’ecourte; a pile of railway sleepers offered a sembance of cover an that was all, for anything more solid would certainly have attracted a German shell. There was no one there, however, as the sentries had two days before moved forward a hundred yards or more. We came upon the listening post suddenly. It consisted simply of three men sitting in a hedge. They were sitting there as motionless as statues and as silent, their muddied pale blue uniforms almost invisible, while their half-seen trench helmets gave them a strange mediaeval air. With their rifles, bayonets fixed, held between their knees, they were ready to charge or challenge at the smallest

ncise. Their only protection was a few lines of barbed wire, which they had put up two nights before. They

rose and saluted on our arrival. The marechal des logis went to inspect his barbed wire, and apparently found something to interest very much, for he went down on all fours and began to crawl forward.. On the ether side cf the hedge two more sentries were talking together in low, mvsterious tones.

The marechal des logis rose to his feet with an expression of annoyance. “They have cut the wire,” he whispered. “,Who has cut it ” I asked. “Why, the B'oches, of course,” he answered impatiently. “One of them

must have crept up last night.. It is

a trick we are always playing on one another. You see, their advanced post is only 200 yards away, and it is quite easy to worm one’s way through the long marsh grass without giving any warning that one is there.” One of the sentries joined in the conversation. “I have just found a German rifle,” he said, “leaning up against the barbed wire fifteen yards 'away from where I was on guard last night. We fired two or three shots, and T think we must have wounded our man, as he left his gun behind.” “They are daring enough,” said the marechal des logis. ‘lt was only a few days back one of them stuck a white flag on our barbed wire. However, we got even with him next day by stealing a rifle that they had left in a hedge well behind their ad- ; vanced post.” GERMAN OFFICER ROBBED. ‘ i In this debatable country war is full | of surprises 'and stratagems, and from ; the French cavalryman’s point of view j it is ideal. Though he is deprived of I his horse and sabre, he has the joy of | fighting in the open, and of pitting his ! wits, man to man, against the enemy’s, j One of these men told me afterwards j how, one night when 'an alarm had | been given, he crawled forward to see I what was happening, and found noth- I ing but a German officer mortally wounded. The curious thing was that, though the officer still had in his pockets his military papers, nothing of any value was left upon him. Watch i and money had all disappeared. “To

my mind,” the chasseur said, “there is no doubt that he had gone out with a couple of men to scout, and that When he was wounded they rbbbed their own officer and left him to die.” After saying “Good-night” to the chasseurs, we tramped away back to the cover of the trenches. There is

something curiously secure in trudging along between two walls of earth well below the surface after the naked openness of “No Man’s Band.”