THE FRONT IN FRANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 June 1916, Page 7

THE FRONT IN FRANCE.

ANZACS IX THE FIRING LINE. (From Malcolm Ross, Official Correspondent with the N.Z. Forces). Northern France, Anzac Day. A visit to the firing line in Northern France impresses upon one the altered conditions under which our men will have to fight, as compared witli Gallipoli. .The transition is from an unfertile, hilly, unpopulated country to one of flat lands, intensely cultivated, and densely peopled. In Gallipoli, from almost any point in our circumscribed area, you obtained extensive views over land and sea. Here, if you wish a distant view, you must climb a tree or a church tower, -and the effort in either direction would be likely to prove a most unhealthy occupation. Even more than this change of scenes and conditions you are impressed with the vastness of the operations and the almost diabolical scientificness of modern warfare as practised on the Western front. As your car rattles over the "pave" you come to the conclusion that France is full of troops, and the endless lines of motorlorries that you pass indicate that no effort is spared to feed the army with the hundred and one things that, are necessary to its success. You note with some ninii'einent numbers running be-' yond twenty thousand. You wonder still more when you are told that there are some forty thousand motor-vans in this sector. In addition to all this, you meet many motor-bicycles and motor-cars hurrying to and fro. The horse also is here, but he has been relegated to a comparatively unimportant rcditiou. Behind the lines are the railways, and a, wonderful system of tramways leading up to and running parallel with the British and German lines. After the intense concentration at Anzac, where only a few hundred yards separated Army Corps and Divisional Headquarters, aril even the head commands were under shell and riflß fire, the distances here seem greater almost than they are. Corps Headquarters are miles behind the lines. Divisional Headquarters are miles in front, hut still miles from the trenches. Much petrol is needed to cat up these distances, Even from Brigade Headquarters you have to walk a few miles along the roads am\ through the saps before you reach the firing line. From the lime you, leave your car until yon get had: to it you get quite a lot of exercise. , • CULTIVATION CLOSE UP.

The peasants, scorning danger, cultivate their fields well wiLhin the battle zone. Oust now the woods in all this region where we have come to fight are bursting into leaf—a glorious sight in the warm sunshine. The ground is carpeted with wild flowers, which children gather, heedless of the sound of' the guns. Old men ploughing and women harrowing the fields pursue their daily tasks with grave unconcern. France must be fed, and upon them and their children the duty lies. flight up to within a mile or two of the firing line there is scarce a bit of arable land that 'a not cultivated. And there is promise of an abundant' harve-l. The gathering' of it may be a more difficult problem. We may be sure that the pi Unit genms of the* French people will r.olve the problem. But one ha:; already visions 01 aircraft sailing in the summer blue arid dropping incendiary bombs in the ripening corn. That, however, is a n,uii.> at which 'vro can play, and with our stringent Mivkaile Ovmany will be the greater siiilVrer. ' fu villages that have" been badly bittereri the people have gone back and have reopened their little Vnops to seli to the soldiers. A3 we drive into one. two young children come dewn the road wheeling a barrow. In a field with the shells screeching overhead., and bursting well beyond in the land we hold, an Old man with a white horse is unconcernedly ploughing his lonely furrow It hi such a strange sight that the Anzacs in the trenches think he must be doing it to give the Herman gunners a line on which to fire. Already there is a recrudescence of the spy mania that Seized hold of our boys in the" early days on Gallipoli. But the old 111511 is'undoubtedly just an ordinary peasant doing his bit in. the world's gr-atCEi conflict.

THE SHATTERED VILLAGES. Clone up to the front we reached a v lingo where a hundred shattered houses told their terrible tale of war. tn all that village there was scarcely one pane of glass left whole. The red-tiled roofs and most, of the brick walls had been either riddled or blown to hits. Shops, houses., churches—it was all the same. Piles of bricks and mortar lay on the fioorsj-itJul from the debris the lares and ponate- of former 'denizens, rich and poor, protruded. An iron bedstead, smashed crockery, a black bowler ,hat, a woman's skirt, children's toys, a broken crucifix, were sad momentoes of the pleasant family life that had existed there but a few months ago Through the holed and tumbled walls of a shop we were able to 'take a short cut past a 'trcet corner Thence the disused Voad along which we walked was pitted with sreat shell holes.

' Freqenfly it'is the inanimate that presents the saddest picture in war. A deserted, broken house, an unused road; appeal to the imagination even more than a wounded mail. Only a few miles leyond this village this road was busy with the tireless traffic of war. Here it was'a relinquished melancholy way, with grass .already sprouting in the instcitices of the "pave." At night they said it was swept by a German machine-gun. As we walked 'along it a Mauser bullet meowed over our heads and hurled itself with a thud in the green field. A solitary steer was eating his till of the lush grass in tha; neglected meadow. We passed a brewery, torn with shot and shell. Smoke was still coming from one of its chimneys. "By jove, it takes a lot to stop them working," said our snide. But we found the vats empty, The old brewery was heing used as a field dressing-station.

IN SAP AND TKENCH. A few hundred yards farther and wo descended into a sap—a shallow, narrow, wet, winding trench, It did not give one a, pleasant feeling of safety, but the mud and the dull water under th* "duck-boards''—battened way with thin latticed iron to keep your feet from slipping—indicated clearly thai while you might build up you could not very well dig down, at least without, much pumping. Compared with our communication trenches on (iallipoli it did not appear to bo well made, but there we had dry ground to deal with. Workino parties, however, were already trying- to better this trench, scraping out the mud and sliHi from under the lifted "duck-boards/' Away down in' the Istiuth we couM two of the German aa'jaage-'shaped '"piivc balloons high in tic air, oh- •■ We also have our Mj'Jjoons. si'' in ' "'lit in this fl»t couu|Ki they ii ■ -urk.

Half way up the trench we found the battalion commander, in gum-boots and a "British Warm," sitting in his dugout. A shell had burst in front of it, and had broken the little window pane. "They didn't get my garden though," said the colonel, directing " our gaze through the broken pane, where we noticed a small box in which a few primroses were blooming. The colonel came with us to the firing-line. The trench was still wet and muddy. In places the "duck-boards" were up for repairs. The latticed iron on them had tVen worn through in places by the trnmn <»f many feet The trench had prnbii' been .in use for eighteen montl)»-^» > -. i / is pro. arcssion in modern trench warfare. "This is called Safety Alley," said the colonel, adding sententiously "because it is the most unsafe place iu the line." THE FIRING LINE. In the firing-line we found an Australian battalion already milking itself at home. Everywhere |lier« was mud or slush or water. In pl""s I'chind the lino the water had r - , I in green, slimy pools. Yet tin fa ids, or such as we looked into, wer' -"iirly comfortable, and being nbo-e .<■ level of the water, and boarded. ere dry. The men in their steel c;\ ;i|,ies were scarcely recognisable as the same soldiers that had fought nt Anzae.. They had painted their helmets with a coating of the yellow trench clay, so that observers in The German planes might not see them. Our men had already been supplied with gas helmets, and there were double flaps to the dug-out doors to help to defeat one of the most devilish phases of ] modern warfare that the Boche has in-

■•■M'tcd. But gas attacks do not profit :lie enemy much in these days. The inost recent helmets invented by the British seem to give an almost perfect immunity from gas attacks. The other day we 'saw an Anzae doctor wearing one of the new helmets enveloped in a cloud of gas liberated experimentally, and he came through it quite safely. Without the helmet he would have been /lead in a few minutes. We have also secured an adequate protection against the use of lachrymatory shells and bc-mbs.

Our men had been for several days in Hi" firing-line, and had not seen a single German. "Wo can hear them talking and singing," said one of our snipers, "but the worst of it is we cannot understand what they say or sing." The German trenches were only seventy-five yards away. The trenches here were infested with rats. They have come over from the deserted villages in which there is no longer any food for them. "How do you kill them?" we asked. "We don't kill them," was the reply. "If ve did we should need a fatigue party to bury them next morning." On another day we visited a different section of the trenches. In (he coinniiinication trench there was mi ugly gap where a high explosive audi, "had hurst. We passed a-ruined monastery and broken houses in the fields. If in Egypt it required the exertions of a Sisyphus to keep the sand-blown trenches clear, here, surely—at least in winter—it must need the labors of a Hercules tn keep the trenches dry. But s; ring is already with us, and summer is at hand, so the lot of our men is, after all, not- altogether an unenviable one. In the wood-, the birds'are in full song. The cuckoo is here, mid, any evening, you can hear the song of the nightingale. It seems altogether out of keepi.ig with the deep diapason of the guns.