THE AISNE BATTLEFIELD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 151, 21 November 1914, Page 5

THE AISNE BATTLEFIELD.

LIFE IX THE TRENCHES. SHOOTLXG TILL RIFLE BURNS. THE STIXG OF A WODXD. "Through the middle of it flows the great river, passing from the east to the west. The banks of the river here are very steep. Above the plain, which sweeps away from the northern bank, rises the massif of Laon. It is an t ideal area for great movements and for artillery work directed upon the valley of the river. Pass eastward a little, there are the heights behind the city of Rheims and above the Vesle, a tributary of the Aisne. Here, again Nature has built a stronghold easily to defend, difficult exceedingly to attack." In these words a correspondent of the London Daily Mail pictured the battlefield of the Aisne on September 20—a week after the battle had begun. "I know of heroic work against these great lines, work that will live with the most momentous of this struggle. I know of smashing attacks which thought takes one's breath away. 1". have heard of narratives of the trenches and of the bridges—these engineers, French and ."English, have in deed 'played the game' —which no man can hear unmoved; how the column s went down again and again to the blazing death of the valley, and how men worked, building and girding in a very inferno—worked with the furious speed of those whose time of work is short.

"And in the trenches, too, the tale of heroism unfolds itself hour by hour. Here is an example, one among a thousand, the story of a wounded private: 'We lay together, my friend and I . . . . the order to retire came. We shot and shot until our rifles burned us. We took careful aim all the while. "Ah, good, did you see that?" I turned to my friend, and as I did so, heard a terrible dull sound like a spade striking upon newly turned earth. His head was fallen forward. I spoke, I called him> by name. He was moaning a little. Then I turned to my work again. They were advancing quietly now. Ah! how cool I was. I shot so slowly. . . so very slowly. " 'And then—do you know what it feels like to be Mounded? I rose just a little too high on my elbow. A sting that pierces my arm like a < hat wire—too sharp almost to be sore. I felt my arm go away from me—it seemed like that — and then my rifle, fell. I believed I was a little dazed. I looked at my friend presently. He was dead.' So, on these green river-banks, and across those fair wooded plains tn'« Huns make their great stand.

A Cliasseau Alpine tells of life in tike trenches:—"They came on singing with tlicir drums beating behind them; 'even at night they had their band to play them to the attack. We met them with the bayonet in the hole they had dug out for themselves, and, you know, in a fight like that, we have the advantage, for our bayonets are longer than theirs; only all these straps about our chest and shoulders get in our way and hinder our movements. The Germans are better off in that respect. So are your soldiers; they can use their arms freely,' The Germans would break for a while and go back, but as Roon as we had seen them running another lot would come on. So it went on time after time. I It was terrible work." Those are the Chasseurs Alpins, who fought under General Pau at Maulhausen. was nothing to it,'' they said. "Day and night the fusilade never ceased." The Germans Drought on two men to their 1 one, and at last they had to give back, leaving the slopes strewn with the bodies of their comrades. All night long the German searchlights moved their ghastly beams up and down tho linoa* searching the rain-soaked hollows wherj the dead lie thick, waiting-far the JVcnflf to attack again. "* *