THE NEW WARFARE.

Taihape Daily Times, 10 July 1918, Page 5

THE NEW WARFARE.

WHAT A BATTLE LOOKS LIKE Describing the conditions of warfare on the British front during the German offensive, the correspondent of the Morning Post wrote: —What would I think, chiefly strike those who saw a battle for the first time would be the distance '(that usually separates, the combatants. When you read of the enemy being "driven back," or of our troops '' giving - way before superior numbers," you must not suppose - that there is necessarily a mix-up of the two forces, or even that they get very close to one another. What happens, as a rule, is something like this: The opposing troops are in improvised positions in woods, groups, of ruined cottages, old trenches hastily deepened and parapeted, sunken roads, which in the north of France are so plentiful, river or canal banks, quarries, or brickworks, or, perhaps, out in the open, each man scraping a little hole in the soil for himself. Almost incessant is the chatter of the machine-gun. There is much manoeuvring to get these into the best positions for playing upon the enemy. Our men all give the Germans credit for quickness and cunning in this respect. Their noncommissioned officers have .been well trained for this duty ever since it was shown by the development of the Rus-so-Japanese War that this would be one of the pricnipal factors in future infantry actions. The'German private is not much of a rifle, shot, so our, men. say. There are a dangerously brilliant marksman, but the ordinary soldier is not much to be feared. This does, not greatly matter, however, seeing the extent to which the machine-gun has taken the place of rifle-fire. It has also become a more effective killing engine"' than artillery. In all the 'accounts of German losses the same refrain occurs—"mostly by machine-gun fire." This means that a large proportion of the wounds are soon cured. If a man is hit by a fragment of sh n !l it makes •a jagged wound, and generally keeps him in hospital a long time. A ballet wound either kills or makes a clean hole which quickly heals up. : What generally happens in a battle, which really is a number of small fights engaged in by groups of. men in the front 'lines, is -that after a while one side, falls back, either because the other sdie's fire is too hot lor else because-the enemy has pushed in between; ;it and the next group and is enfilading it—that is to say, firing upon it from the side. The greater number of bursting shells :do no harm. "Seldom in open warfare of the regular kind do troops get near enough to each other to throw bombs. Not often are positions held long enough for bayonet charges to be possible. , , Over a large part of the present battlefield open warfare is not of the ordinary kind. It is not really open As I have mentioned, we are fighting in a big area in an old system of trenches Both we and the enemy move up and down these, coming fairly often to close quarters As there is no definite front line, it is easy for men of one side to stray over to the other by accident A German soldier rode into a party of our men on a bicycle. He had no idea he

had got beyond his own outposts. Another German a gunner carrying a telephone box from his battery to an ob- I servation post, took the wrong turning and found himself in our lines instead of his own. Often small detachments of troops discover that, they are in hostile country, and slip off unnoticed or have to fight their way out during our retirement. A battery of Eoyal Horse Artillery was "lost" for three days and tuned up at the end of them hungry, but otherwise none the worse.