MODERN WARFARE.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 10 August 1917, Page 5

MODERN WARFARE.

— — Conditions at the front

To fight unceasingly for over 12 months, to spend day after day under almost continuous shell fire, and at the end of the period to be exactly the same trench, was how Major-General J. G. Legge, C.M.G., C. 8., InspectorGeneral of Military Camps in Australia, summed up one phase of modern warfare in the course of a lecture, delivered under the auspices of the Newman Society at Melbourne University. Such an experience, he said, had actually befallen the men of an Australian division on the Somme, who, at the end of 13 months’ service, still occupied the same line of trenches which they took over originally. The intervening period had, however, been crammed with incident. Each day provided its own excitement and perils—the raids across No Man’s Land, the hunts for “specimens” in the shape of German prisoners, and nights spent under the highest strain, anticipating and in readiness for an enemy attack. The raids, stated General Legge, were probably enjoyed more than anything else by the Australian soldiers at the front. They looked upon them as a sort of joke, and there was always great hilarity as they dressed for the occasion, and blackened their faces, to make themselves Ies s distinguishable in the dark. Revolvers and knobkerries we re the favourite weapons of the men on these occasions.