MODERN NIGHT BATTLES.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 March 1917, Page 7

MODERN NIGHT BATTLES.

JVHAT THEY LOOK LIKE. • A LANGUAGE OP FIREWORKS. (Australian War Correspondent, C. E. VV. Bean). (Copyright reserved by the Crown). British Headquarters, France, Jan. 14. The few visitors who occasionally are sent for one purpose or another to the front almost all tell you, "We had no idea it was like this." The columns of description which have been written must amount to many ship loads, and it comes rather as a shock to realise that in spite of all the daily reading, the picture has perhaps not yet been conveyed. In thinking over the subjects which have not yet been touched on in these letters, it has struck me that perhaps the most prominent one isitlie night attack. It |jas' se|dom been possible to see an actual charge of troops in France. I have only seen two. The others, which one might have been able to see, have ill every case been made at night or, by dawn or twilight, when, however close you may attempt to go, the men cannot be seen.

During one part of the Somme fighting, I was camped on a hill several miles in the rear of the trenches along with some Australian chaplains, a dressing station, and a coffee stall. Almost every night for over a Jnonth, a battle on some part of the horizon was a normal part of the proceedings. If it were an Australian battle one wjint up to a better position and the work was quite different. If it were an English or a Scottish or Irish battle, we usually watched it from there—until •It became so ordinary a part of the nightly programme that we scarcejy turned to look. ! Along the whole of the Western front the line from the sea to Switzerland is marked, at night, by a succession of what look like exquisite brilliantly white lilies on graceful arched stalks, always unrolling themselves at intervals along t.ie horizon where the line lies. Except 1 on bright moonlight nights these flares arcshooting all the time, so that not many minutes pass without every part of No Man's Land being within distant rangii of one flare or another. In disturbed parts of the line, such as the Somme, especially where attacks are expected, or are actually in progress, the flares como up without intermission, and almost in bouquets, three or four chasing one another into the air.

The night attack, as you watch it from a- mile or so in the rear, is simply a story told by flashes of guns and shells, and by flares and the enemy's signal fireworks. You know that it is about the time for the intense bombardment to begin—for the slow bombardment by heavy artillery may have been going on and off for two days. Suddenly a field gun barks ( behind you on the right, followed by two more barks. They are off. Within five seconds the skyline behind you is a line of momentary flashes, resounding to the banking as of the huge iron tanks. The sky overhead is full of whistling and rustling, as of some swiftrunning invisible stream. Occasionally you notice a tiny spark whirled with almost incredible speed in an instant front one end of the universe to the other. It is the spark on the fuse of a travelling shell.

You might imagine this noiss going on all the time in the background, from then onwards; a noise as of five hundred small boys banging five hundred empty ship's tanks. Over the horizozn ahead is the lighter flicker of of bursting shell. All evcept- the bursts high in the air may bo hidden from you by the'crest. The higher shrapnel burst shows as in ah instantaneous brilliant spark, as clean as ,the momentary wink of an electric torch and as small as a pin point, tow on the ground comes occasionally a lucid orange burst. That is where some heavier high explosive shell has buried itself in earm or parapet, and has torn bags and bank and everything else asunder in a scatter to lurid dust.

"Within two minutes of our first gun there shoots into the air, behind these shell flashes, a low star Which you distinguish at once from the constant flares by its pinkish color. It bursts into two rich red stars the color of the twinkle in wine. Amongst tho white flares there presently goes up another double-red flare from the same place. Half a minute later a similar one some degrees to the right.

They are the signal flares sent up by the enmy infantry, in part of the line bombarded by ua, calling on the German artillery to get busy and barrage our attack. Those red flares go up 'constantly, and four minutes, later you notice that there is sensible increase in the high bursting shrapnel far in front of you. That is from the enemy's guns beginning to reply. They are laying down a barrage on our front trench, and on the support trenches behind it; you realise that amid the racket there is an occasional crash, much nearer, though almost drowned in the rest. lie Li throwing shrapnel over our communications far back from the front.

From that tim? the battle is a line of white flares, thrown almost as if they were juggling with them, with colored flares constantly interspersed. From the far left rises a golden flare which bursts into a perfect shower of yellow stars, slowly subsiding, In every attack for three weeks that golden in're appears in the same corner of tho battlefield. Perhaps the German corps further north is using a different colored signal, for they change them constantly. Then a green flare is thrown—probably the German infantry saying to their own artillery, "lengthen your range for goodness sake; your shells arc most uncomfortably short."

The flares by this tima have ceased to go up along .most of the line which has been attacked. Along the horizon where the shells are bursting there rises a single light every minute or so. The Germans have nearly gone from the rest of the line, and from both ends of the part attacked, the flares go up hour after hour; sheafs of white— and constant single red, green, orange lights. The noise of 'the intense bombardment- has long since subsided, and the guns are keeping up only a steady settled barrage for the night. It is exquisitely beautiful—this graceful firework for out in the cold, clear night—the German infantry and the artillery officers speaking to their guns in battle, whether by day or night; for you can see the flares fluttering in the brightest midday, thrown high above the dust of battle, like a piece of shimmering tin. Wo used tp try and follow the battle on the horizon, those nights, reading the ligbtß as you would read a book. One would have to leave it with tht chapter 1 half finished. Sometimes we read it .right, but more often wrong.' j