THE GUNS AT YPRES

Taihape Daily Times, 2 November 1917, Page 2

THE GUNS AT YPRES

SCENE FOB NATION'S PICTURES,

"ATTACKED BY EVERYTHING BUT SUBMARINES. (Australian War Correspondent, C. E. W. Beau.) British Headquarters, FRANCE, August 5. "Clockwork." said the battery major as he looked round The end of the first exhausting task of the field guns had come. It was the moment to limber up and dash to a forward position behind the infantry. The last round was fired. The whistle wont. And therewaiting quickly under the remains of certain battered hedges, wer,e the teams arrived a few moments before from their lines far in the rear, where day after day they had waited for this instant.

Ten minutes later the batteries were all drawn up waiting the word. The same battery major was standing with the commander of the historic brigade. "We are waiting for your guns now, colonel," he said, "I hope my fellows will be up to time, " muttered the colonel, looked at his watch. The major looked up. "Here they come," ho said.

Over the brow of the hill were com-. ing the horses of the leading team. They filed past the waiting batteries of the other brigade.—never did batteries look betted than these Australian units in, the thick of this latest great battle of Flanders. The waiting batteries fell into lines behind them, and the columff wound its way over the misty IoV 'lands towards positions where for nearly three long years the green flats had been gradually torn into crater fields, and where through £.ll that time until this morning no man nor body of men had dared to move openly. There was fighting still on some of the low ridges far to the flank, In one or two places on the journey the column could have been seen by Germans on very distant hills. But those Germans had fifty things more urgent to think about. The morning was foggy. A few small shells fell around the route. But it is doubtful if they were going perfectly smoothly and normally.

FIRST HINT OF TROUBLE. Far ahead, over the last rise on the route, where the battery commanders, were out on the scattered country selecting tiie exact positions where each battery as it arrived should go. there was some hint that matters would not always proceed so smooThly. The country was full of movement. - Infantry columns advancing lines of men moving up the further ridge, tanks crawling forward on their bellies in the mud, parties of German prisoners coming back. Occasionally streams of machine gun bullets whistle past. One party of infantrymen appeared to take cover from them behind shell craters. In passing those men the reconnoitring artillery officers found that they were German machine guns still unsuppressed somewhere in the landscape, which were turning from one group of men to another. Two artillery officers watched the scene from a trench, when one of them fell across his friend with a bullet through his head. Presently into that somewhat awkward situation over the crest of the ridge behind came the leading teams of the Australian guns. '

Now 'it was clear that something in this part had temporarily held up the programme. The Germans soma where held a point from which they could sec that column pass the crest. At once the lighter German shell began to fall around them. Far out with the infantry, the artillery's own forward observing officer looking back at that moment, saw the column coming over the slope—just as the Germans must have seen it —and saw that barrage began to fall. As the information of it spread around among the German batteries concerned, one after another switched its fire on to that point until the shells fell around them as fast as one could throw tennis balls from a basket. Away on the flank the barrage was beginning to fall also on certain "British batteries. INTO THE BARRAGE. The barrage was there and they had simply to go into it, wnTcTT "hey did without an instant's hesitation. The column for the first time' broke .into a trot. The drivers of the leading batteries, getting well ahead towards their position, flogged their sweating horses into and out of and between and over shell-holes, almost lifting their horses by their exertions. Buttery after battery found its exact sue. The ammunition was dumped—the limbers cleared back over the rfuge. One battery near the crest struck trouble. One of its guns sidled into a Shell-hole, and no amount of flogging and driving could for the moment dear it. The team behind it was watting, when a five point nine high explosive shell plunged fair into Trs midst and burst, killing or wounding every horse. Some Australian artist wiH vft paint the battle p ie tu v as it ,iood at J t>.at moment. The h;,Hn ;.. . •,. ,^

lower ground ahead steadily firing up the ragged slope to the horizon; a battery in the foreground" working irs guns amidst the splash of frequent black bursts And the little rise in the middle with the horses and men of the gun teams lying around it. and the two guns waterlogged in the broken ground, exactly as you sec them in the picture of the olden time battles. PAST THE AEEOPLANES. The limbers were just clear away to the rear, and the guns had picked up their task and were worked steadily ahead with it, with shells falling thickly around them and the air full of whirring fragments when there was fhe burr of a motor overhead and, looking up they saw an aeroplane wheeling below the low cloud, not six hundred above. pit black German crosses painted beneath its planes. As it wheeled over batteries they could clearly see the airmen. As one of them said, "and see the bombs as one after another five or six of them dropped from the machine" They exploded harmlessly. '' They came at us with everything but sub marines," as one officer said afterwards.

They fpught all through the day exactly as though there had not been a shell within the landscape-played their part in the big game and kept their places precisely as did the more fortunate batteries elsewhere. The long bombardment of the week or more ending with this furious day's work had taken its toll. The officer who was killed early was an old hand from Anzac. He had been a medical orderly in the old 3Td Brigade 'there; and when two detachments of the old 7th had been wiped out by "TRe Turks' fire he quickly walked up to the guns and asked to be transferred and taken on as a gunner. He died as he would have wished —with his battery in action in one of the greatest battles of history.