SILENT BATTLEFIELDS.

Taihape Daily Times, 9 October 1919, Page 5

SILENT BATTLEFIELDS.

THE OLD FRONT LINE‘

‘PASS-CHENDAELE TO—DAY.

RIDGE OF DESOLATION,

LONDON, Sept. 21%

Mr Keith Murdoch, writing to the Austral-ian press, gave the following descriptions of the battlefields of France and Belgium as they appear today:—— ‘ Not even a soldier can imagine the profoumlnesg of the desolation, bnooding over the old battlefields to day. The old spirit, the action, the energy, and lusty strength of youthful armies no longer temper the scenes of «waste and destruction. All is eniptiness, weediness. Men's strife seems to have rolled far zbway, and to have left. here a vacuous and untenanted wilderness, already almost forgotten. From Ypres to St. Quentin I"ira.velled through a monotonous, weedy desolation, with the ghosts of cities and villages arising here and there like dumb Sentinels of the dead. At. places this waste is 20 miles Abroad, and all along its fringes are far wider zones of semi-shattered places where the peasants are striving again to raise corn. Amidst the shell‘-holes and smashed redoubts the weeds grow in the middle zone thigh high. The rankest growths hide the old trenches and landniarks, which the artillery had not already made unrecognisable amidst the tumbled earth. M The War Oiiice has 200,000 Germans and 85,000 Chinese under British officers clearing up the fields, collecting the rusty iron, the reddened barhed wire, the old shells and rails. These men dynamite the German redoubts for. steel girders. All our Passcllend~aele redoubts have gone this way, and now lie, jagged lumps of concrete,. but the redoubts along the Meinn road remain as memorials, .

AM@_NG_ THE RUINS or MESSINES.

Messines is blown to"'fragnie'lltts, in xrhich the old villagers dig for hidden treasures, and the “chink, ehink! ” of the demolition parties’ tools resound across the wide valleys where we to{igllt.7'”l‘xi'o garish shanty es'.t.aminets have been 'erecte.d at ~tZhe I\-I‘e'ssines cro¥l's-',r:‘oads. ‘ ~,’l‘hese {tin anid timber estaminets spring up in many parts of the Belgian battlefields. You can drink Belgian beer or bad wine at the Zonn_ebekc cross-roads, or Broodseinde on sites triply red with Australian blood. The shanty hotels crowd each other at Ypres, near the Menin -Grate through which the stream of trippers passes, but on the French fields it is difierent. No soul stirs amidst the rubble of -proud old Bailleul. There is life in 4Meteren again, .but. t"he‘dozen pioneers dwelling therebear Such signs as “e:':iifeur” and “Ironmonger, ” not “Beer.” The general rule along the front is where gr;2und‘Was not heavily shelled agriculture is beginning again. Elsewhere there is no sign, indeed, no hope of production yet, for every yard will have to be laboriously 'trea‘ted., , The saddest scene of utter decay is that of the Passehendaele fields, hvhere a few prisonerf companies and a few Tommy graveidiggers are the only peo. ple visible in tlhe wilderness. Australian souvenirs can still be founde tattered unifornis in the Daisy and Dairy Woods. There are little Closses marking the graves. The nearest Ans-_ tralian grave to Passeliendaeleis that of Private A_ E. Toll, of the 20th Battalion. I searched for signs of those brave men of the Ninth Brigade who got to the outlying houses of the village itself on that dreadful morning of October, but their fate willever remain a mystery. The Fifth Division’s memorial on Polygon, Butte has a lonely and magnificent domination over theWhole of the Ypres sepulchre.

The other C-i.'visional memorials are less advanced. Each is awaiting mater--321 fer the obelisk. Not. enough Australian .bo'dies have been recovered at Villels-Brotonneu}: and in the Chuignég

distriet for the cemetery at the foo": of

the Corps ‘Memo:-ial,. This cemetery, the:'efo‘2‘e, has been filled up with other dead, representing all parts of the Empire. This graveyard Work will last few: five years at ‘the present rate. The pex-centege of bodies I-eeavered is prov. ing small, but some day there‘will be many’ peaceful c-.-enwteries with lines of lieaast-ones surrounding the central tablet “Their narne livmh for evermore.” OLD TRENCHES OF FLEURBAIX. The sights most. impressive to an Australian along the front are the burst black sandbags and trenches of Fleuxlaafx, our first, and ‘perhaps the most «dlisa'stl'ous fighting ground in France, and ‘the neglected Eiulllecourt field, vvherexthe great Australian Army is represented by a few diseoloured crosses, and even the saps ~of the trenches are I-est: in the general obliteration, cleeay, and weediness. Traffic has been :resumed on the Bel-lenglise-St_ Quentin Canal, and further north one can see our Decauville railways used for .civilian‘ purposes, with g:'a,ndnlothers under black umbrellas sitting" ‘in the trucks which not long ;a»goic.a.rrie’d our helmeted soldiers, l

. The anniversary of the entry of Augfralia ’q lfviw- d:lVi.Sid)l9 in tho. ‘finest; fettle into theacostly offensive uf7Pas-

scllcll'(lacle finds the ridge one of tfhd.

bleakest and most deserted planes 13 the world. It is scarcely belicveabla that 100,000 Austi-,a‘Eans, as the spearhead for many hundreds of thousands of British, so short a time ago, stormed over this empty ground against a. pick: ed VGel-man corps, the outer shield of at least. 500,000 men concentrated be-4 hind the enemy lines. ' ’f’here‘is so little ‘left, and so few» graves. _Even, for instance, the artillery barracks at Ypres, which seemed a.‘ perfect haven of rest for troops from‘ the muddy struggle in the front Aline would not: now 'be -,re-garded -as fif; shelter for poultry. They are utterly deserted, noisoxne, -and roofless- Divisional headquarters‘ in !dug~ou’ts under the ramparts are falling to hit; and are given over to rats. Entering General W~alker’s flxrst divisional headquarters, where. two years ago, an Australian staff was workingday and night‘ under the glare of electricity, one stumbled knee-deep in pools of waterd The old camping ground round Wiltje and Zonnebeke Lake are now barren fields of tumbled earth. Westhoek‘ Riidge, from which the ofiensive was launched, is Wholly overgrown. Bits of our jumping-oif tape can still be: discovered, but the shelters dug during those anxious hours-of German bombardment, before the dawn, are lost in the general maze. , M

Standing on Passchendaelflf”? one realises to a great extent the imfoort—ance of the territory Won by the Au§tralians, for we carried our lines‘ to tlie edge of 'the final. ridge, but you can Walk time and again -over this? hardwon ground, -and -see nothing living,_ and nothing Australian, except a few tatters of khaki, a few broken rifles, discoloured crosses. and the fine memort. ial at Polygon Wood. ‘ ~