WAR NOTES

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 19 September 1917, Page 3

WAR NOTES

MESSINES SIDELIGHTS.

NEW ZEALANDERS’ TRENCHES.

FRANCE, June 13.

There was never such a spectacle in warfare as the attack on Messines Ridge. One watched it as it were from an armchair looking across on to the stage. Here is the exact picture as we saw it hour by hour. It was dark when I went to call for the New Zealand war correspondent. Everywhere along the road one passed small columns of fully-loaded men moving silently through the night— New Zealanders, Australians, British. A s we motored towards the front everything was in the most perfect order. I never saw a hint or suspicion of a hitch. Suddenly on the dark flats we ran into a gas stream. So the German was shelling these regions with gas and tear shell. The particular corner to which we made our way was for that night occupied by an Auckland battalion. With 12 minutes to go before the advance a big New Zealander has come along the trench. “Come on,” he said ? “tucker —any of you not had your breakfast?” Big dixie s of tea had been carried along the trench some time before, and the men had been munching and yarning in the dark. The pat, pat, pat of gas-shell continued. Two minutes to go. The ma-chine-guns have petered out into silence. The hill-slope is as peaceful ag it ever was. Three of our big guns have fired—others follow within a second or two somewhat as a man quickens his first steps when he starts to run. Then the whole trench wall rocked inwards and swayed and then rocked, and thumped again. Far away to the left a huge, red bubble, covered with a -grey slag, suddenly grows and then bursts, throwing a rosy red underglow .on some thick cloud hanging above it. Then another bursts beside and another. The ground rocks and sways and rocks along before there arrives the tremendous delayed detonation. Brilliant sheafs of some molten substance besides the mines; then more mine bursts within a second or two further left behind the ridge; simultaneously three heavy similar red bursts away on the. right. For just two hours from that moment one might as well have sat down in the trench with one’s back tthe fight. There was nothing distinguishable to see or hear. The whole valley was full of noise and dense with deep grey smoke. The barrage which one expected did not come on that trench. A stray rifle bullet or two flew over. Occasional shells fell near. One could hear machine-guns chattering through the fog but they gradually ceased. The few white and red flares which overtopped the dust grew rarer and rarer until they were clearly only rising beyond the ridge. The men in the trench put on their kit. The order came to fix bayonets. An officer moved along the parapet. They scrambled out, formed up and were quickly lost in the smoke. We turned to our breakfast.