NEW ZEALANDERS ON THE SOMME.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 March 1917, Page 7

NEW ZEALANDERS ON THE SOMME.

PIONEERS IN ACTION. DIGGING UNDER FIRE AND GAS. (I|rom Captain Malcolm Boss, War Correspondent with N.Z. Forces). January 14, 1917. The New Zealand Pioneers have left tlioir mark —and a deeply-dug mark it is—on the battlefield of the 'Sonimo. Burins; the lew weeks thev vtore employed there they dug 13,103 yards of trenches. A great deal of this work was deep and wide, for communications, and practically the whole of it was done under fire, often heavy, and at times under the added disabilities of bursting tear and gas shells. Their splendid performance is probably easily a record for any part of the Somme battlefield. One says that, considering all the circumstances, and not in any boastful spirit. The battalion say .yry little about it. Tli3 infantry who saw it don?-, ana who benefited greatly by it, will, however, tell you ithat it vvus work worthy of unstinted praise It mast be remembered that the British Army at the start of the war had 110 Pioneer Battalions. The Indian Army hud them, and, of course, the Germans. Was there anything that tins "peaceful" nation did not have ready to its hand for war!

The New Zealand Pioneer Battalion was formed in Egypt in* March, 1916. It consists of Maoris, pakehas and Rarotongans. There are about two hundred more Maoris than pakehas, and there are not many Rarotongam. Botli officers and men v/ereHrained U3 infantry, and they are armed as' infantry. A ■ proper Pioneer Battalion should, of course, have picked men of different trades and occupations, What the New Zealand Pioneers lack in this respect they, however, make up in initiative. The Maori is a handy man. For generr ations he has done everything for himself—felled his trees for the long canoes by the slow process of fire; fashioned his frail craft with adzes of stone; laboriously carved out of the hardest jade Ms ornaments and implements, of war, and made his fishhooks from hone. So now, on the Somms or in Flanders, far away from his ancestral home, he digs a trench or builds a house with the best of them. The pakeha, Pioneers were Otago Mounted KiUes. They, too, conii) of the best the country breeds, hava learnt their lesson in the hard ssbool of experience.. There is little tlict conies amiss to them. They are men of initiative and daring. It was lwrd on them

to leave their horse 3 in Egvpt; harder still to bo turned from infantry intij Pioneers. The glory of the fighting is not for tbem. They are shot at, but they have little chance of shooting

back. They are still hoping that some day they may be in the thick of it, that the Germans will ccme right on and give them their chance, but up to the present all their hopes have been blighted. There was one night, away forward of Piers,

when they hugged their rifles in the hope that the Boehe would come on. The infantry just in front of them were expecting a counter-attack. Several times it threatened, and the Pioneers dropped their spades and took up their rifles. Three or four times they stopped work to look for fight. The digging that night

was a good deal interfered with, but all the alarms were false alarms, and at dawn the Pionjers weni back to their bivouaics disappointed, SHRAPNEL, GAS AND FLAMENWERFER. The New Zealand Pioneers came, into the Somme battle towards ill? end oi August, and their first task was the digging of trenches in Wood. Unfortunately the guides supplied to them lost thlir way in the darkness. In consequence they wandered about for the greater part of the night, and only leached the scene of operations at 3.30 a.m. They worked for half an hour, and then, as dawn was approaching, they had to return. They came back to this work again and finished it satisfactorily. There was a lot of German shelling, but the shells were bursting about 100 yards sway, and the Pioneers did not happen to be there. The work was completed with only two casualties.

About, the beginning of September the New Zealanders took over some work on the liazentin Ridge. About this time there \Vas a great deal, of shelling, and on one occasion the enemy put a gas barrage between thein and theirbivouacs as they were returning from work. It was their first experience of

Karly in September when the Pionesrs were working in front of the German ' trenches on the slope of the Bazentin Ridge, tliey witnessed at close range an attack by British troops in which our flamemverfer was used. Great flames about a' hundred feet long, but lasting only about three minutes, shot forward. The flames leapt as high as the tree tops, and made a gorgeous spectacle. It was something like a bush fire in Xew Zealand. The attack was made at noon, the German trench being only some ten yards in front of the British front line. During this attack the Pioneers had to cease their work and go back some distant® so as not to interfere v/ith the lines of communication to the front trenches. They returned next day and continued their work. After this job' was finished they worked on the roads about Montav.ban, and then began. to dig the long communication trench. At this they did magnificent work, never ceasing to cany the trench on from day to day as the inffiiitry advanced. The first section of trenches enabled our men to get safe communication up to the front line for the big attack on the loth. The Pioneers were told that they must jave these finished in time for this attack. They were [completed by the evening of the 14th, though four or five times the man had to be taken off the work for twentyfour hours at a stretch owing to tile heavy German shelling. The trenches were, of course, not carried so far without loss, for the Germans still had a good deal of high ground that served | them well as observation post. On the night of the 14th Kohere, one the finest Maori officers, was killed, and there were other casualties. Kohere, with his dying breath, made his will in t'ne Maori fashion. He sent for another •rangatira," or chief, and tohf him that he wished this lefti to 'So-and-so, and that to somebody else. He wave instructions also regarding the payments of certain liabilities, And all the time, he was uneasy in his mind as to who would take comjnand of the members of his tribe m the company or piatoon he commanded. fle wished that . this mantle should fall on —, another,jnpmber of the -tribe, and when tjiey gave *.

promise that that would be done young Kohere smiled the pleasant Maori smile and passed away contentedly.

FORWARD WITH THE INFAOTRW . In addition to doing all this trenchdigging, the Pioneers , made splinterproof headquarters lor brigadiers and two dressing stations. They made a deep dug-out, fifteen feet down, for brigade headquarters. All this time tlu'V ] wore under shell -Ire. Might and day i they worked, one gang working well forward at night, and the others finisning x in the daytime the part of the trench already dug under cover of darkness. As the infantry advance?!, so the , Pioneers advance. The infantry never ■ got more than twelve hours ahead. The Pioneers made it their aim and ambition that the infantry would never get clean away from them. Once there was a great bit of work done. There were twi platoons of Maoris and two platoons of jjakehas and the Earotongang in that venture. Each was pitted, against the others, and the commander walked up and down the line, cursing, praising, admonishing, till brown and white, sweating at their task, performed prodigious feats. The Germans in front woke up next morning to find that wider their very noses a trench had, mushroom-like, sprung up in the night. Some prisoners that we captured next day were very sore about that little performance, so apparently it was not-alone the C.O. of the Pipneers that used profane words. For our part, wo felt sure that tha Re- 1 cording Angel liacl left our C.O. with a good credit balance on the sum total of the night's work! ■ The hottest time the 'Pioneers had was on the day of the advance. As tliey went forward the enemy shells were bursting over their and the shells continued to come in salvos for 2i hours. Sometimes the salvos would come at intervals of two minutes. On other occasions they would come at longer intervals. Once -when the Maoris, w ere digging the Germans endeavored :to barrage the trench when they were working, but tha shells were falling a hundred yards wide on one side. The Maoris worked all day watching this close shelling. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon they left the trench with |only six casualties. A' company working on a higher bit l of ground on the left lost heavily. One officer died of wounds and another was wounded,' but the others had miraculous escapes. They had their jMuipmenfc shot off and their clothes torn and pierced with shrapnel and bits of high explosive. Out of that company in this bombardment 12 were killed and 40 wounded. The company was then withdrawn. The work was blown to bits. That night another company from the pioneers went out and completed the work?

Usually the Gorman trenches wore so battered in by our own artillery that it was scarcely worth while trying to re-! pair them. Some that our men attempted to reorganise contained holes from our shelling that went 14ft down. Rather than endeavor to cope with such a state of things it was often tetter to dig entirely new trenches on new, firm ground. The Pioneers,'like the rest) of our men at the Somme, had to put up with a good deal of discomfort, especially after the cold Tain started, and deep, sticky mud became the order of the flay. They made holes for themselves to bivouac in. Sometimes they crawled into Boohe holes. After the loth the travelling cookers came up, and proved a godsend. The battalion chanced the smoke from them.. The enemy did not spot the smoke, and the cookers were unmolested.

Both white men and Maoris, though it WR3 not their work, often carried in wounded when the day's or night's-work was finished. They carried in both English and Germans, but they always waited till they got all their own men in before they did this. Amongst those thus rescued was a Middlesex colonel. •During their work (rfter.the loth the Pioneers dug up two machine-guns and four trench mortars that were partly buried by our shelling, and that the infantry had overrun in tlieir forward sweep, Ono particular .piece of trench dug at night under the very nose of the enemy easily gave tile lie to all the most optimistic figures ih the books. It wa3 4ft 9in deep, 3ft wide and 452 yards long. It was dug by 200 men in five hours, and not a single man was hit. The Boche was so annoyed when he. saw it next morning that he .proceeded to blow it to smithereens.