HOW THE TROOPS FIGHT IT.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 16 July 1917, Page 3

HOW THE TROOPS FIGHT IT.

AFTER THE SOMME BATTLE. C. W. BEAN, (Australian War Correspondent.) BRITISH HEADQUARTERS, FRANCE, April 24. The area of France over which the Australians have been advancing is, of course, littered with German paraphernalia. It is very much like the'pictures by the old-fashioned battle artist who never painted a General in the corner lying across a battered trumpet and helmet and two or three bent bayonets. Only nowadays they set to carefully pick those battered picturesque articles up. The Somme battlefield teems with the debris of both sides. Here is what the Australians collected from it. The greater part of the salvage is of material belonging to our own side. To begin-with, I believe that a single battalion collected eight machine guns of various sorts from Delville Wood, That was in the early winter when first the Australians went into The mud area near Flers. The scene of that' ter- ' rible battle of July was simply crammed with the relics' of the hellish fighting which raged backwards and forwards through it. One Lewis gun -was found in a tree, exactly wdrere the brave gunner had crept with it when some German gunner shell or bullet found him. The place was far too hot. for thorough salvage when first the battle pushed beyond if to the high wood, and by the time it took the next step the troops who know the place were far away on some other part of the front, and these old relics were long forgotten. The whole of this picked up and "rescued from the waste in the mud of the Somme Is sheer gain to our side. Units of the Australian force on the Somme picked out of the old battlefield, and sent down to the salvage, dumps to be cleaned up and reissued in the months of January and February alone.

Twenty thousand rifles, more than seven million rounds of rifle ammunition, over a million brass cartridge cases, ten thousand five hundred rounds of gun ammunition, over eighteen sacks of web equipment, over eighteen thousand five hundred steel helmets, over seven thousand six hundred boxes of grenades and bombs, and rather more than eighteen thousand sacks of boots, six hundred and nine sacks of lost underclothing, and three thousand four hundred sacks of other clothing and kit. The value of a sers viceablo rifle alone is £5 10s —a great proportion of these were easily made fit for use; in those that were not serviceable the parts were nevertheless, very “valuable. There are small units attached to each division and corps to help in forwarding this stuff and to collect in special areas Avhich troops have left, but the very great bulk of it has been collected by the battalions and batteries and companies themselves. It is so clearly a good work, and one which helps to win the Avar, and provide more material, and keep down the ghastly totals of expense, that it only needs this to be advertised and explained in order to secure the help of the regiments in collecting the waste they found around them. I think that Victorian troops made the biggest haul that I. have heard of yet.

WHAT TWO BATTALIANS DID One battalion in a single day, just after coming out from a stiff figti’t in front of Noreuil, picked up on the old battlefield near its camp 250 rifles, 500 shovels, 2SO picks, 6 trench mortars, and a whole list of material ending with three stretchers, two water boses, and five table forks.

Another battalion worked for three days, each company, keeping its separate list of what it collected. A Company collected 128 rifles, B. Company 331, C. Company 574, D. Company 455. The figures for boxes of bombs—complete—were 244, 464, 415, and 365; shovels, 4o(, /10, 000, 277. The four of them collected just short of 30.000 steel cases, eight machine-gun tripods, 5600 flares, 131 water battles, IS greatcoats, 495 picks, 831 live shells, one range-finder, 405 smoke bombfe, one damaged Lewis machine-gun,, 346 boxes of Stokes bombs, and great tallies of about a hundred other seperate sorts and classes of war material. The value of them is well written■■•■''down at over £19,000 for the three days’ work.

A WAREHOUyEFL7L OF BOOTS Evc.l3 '“an who has a sliare in tln f work has the satisfaction of knowing that the supplies which ho collected are not sent back to the base, if it can possibly be avoided—the work of carrying them to the base and j.r.ngi them back again is the last thing that is wanted. The ammunition goes to the railheads, where it is looked over J experts and re-issued if possible Engineering stores such as good wire! and so fortn, are sent to the local engineering dump; ordnance stores, such as Picks and shovels and rifles, are sent to the workshops belonging to the corps which collected them or" to the firoat ordnance stores at the bases,

Avhere in one centre alone there was 1800 girls and 1800 men employed in cleaning, renovating and repairing articles. The savings carried out in tnls waf are so colossal that one never had the least conception of thorn till one had actually scon them. At one depot at the base I saw a great warehouse shod a hundred yards, I should say, in length, literally stacked to tiie roof along its whole extent Ayith boots sent down to be renovated.

It is a curious fact, but a very true one, that the real art of the salvage officer is the art of advertisement. If he has notices up at all convenient corners showing the way to the net,rect salvage dump where salvaged goods may be deposited—if the dumps are in convenient places and the roads and paths placarded by posters, so that every man and officer knows what arrangements are being made to save waste, and where —the work is half done. ’ * - They have had every sort of article on the Ahzac salvage dumps, from a cinema machine, with £SO forgotten in a winter campaign, to a bushel of oats, a gas generator, and a Scotsman’s kilt. The saving to the nation even by the work done by this one corps is inestiipablo.