WINTER WARFARE.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 April 1917, Page 8

WINTER WARFARE.

RUSSIAN FRONT PICTURES FROST AIDS ARMIES IN ATTACK. There are radical differences between effect of winter on the French and Russian fronts, writes Arthur Ransome in the Daily News. Winter in tho West is of so mild a character that its principal effect is that of the Russian autumn —discomfort, and dirt, and an inevitable hindering of operations. Winter in Northern Russia is so cold, so prolonged, and so steadfast that it niters the whole character and, from a military point of view, the whole conformation of the front, and makes operations just possible just there where operations were impossible before. For example in tho north the positions are cut up in all dilections in spring, autumn, and summer, first by floods, then by impassible bogs left behind by the floods again, Then comes frost, and the ground hardens; the freeze, the marshes become solid ice and it is as if there had been a sudden shifting of all the defences. The points where attack is possible become infinitely more numerous. The difficulty of holding new-won positions becomes greater because no man enn dig himself into ground that is as hard as steel,

The freezing of the rivers on this front, where great rivers form the natural lines of defence, has a double effect. The river ceases to exist as a river. That is to say, it is no longer possible to hold with comparatively small numbers of troops, knowing that hostile preparations to cross it will give you time to bring up your reserves. You may attack or be attacked across it, precisely as if it were solid ground. Therefore, with winter begins a sudden violent activity, the object of which is to keep the river in its natural frozen condition where you think you can attack, and to make it into an artificial defence where you think you may be attacked. This last is done in two ways. The first is the making of the barbed-wire entanglements on the actual river, by frcezin" the stakes into the ice. The second method is to break up .the ice itself •Scouts go out and sink explosives deep into the river. When these explode, a geyser of ice and water is flung in a column hundreds of feet into the air, descending in huge lumps that smash the ice in all directions, so that even after it has begun to freeze again it is treacherous in the extreme. While busy yourself in this way, you are also concerned to make, it impossible for the enemy to do the same at those points that you are reserving for your own private purpose. All through the long nights, which are never quite dark, because of faint light that hangs the snow, scouts on sides endeavour to ch"e' niatp each other on precarious no maj's land of frozen water. BLACK AND WHITE. [ Snow, in its own way, has effects as marked as those of frost. Paint a thick white layer of snow over tha whols front, and, for perhaps an hour, you would think that there was nothing there. Then the actual line of the front becomes more visible than ever it was in summer. Loopholes and barbed wire posts are flung up as if they etched with exaggerated clearness ' on the white ground. The snow melts fairly quickly off the top of shelters, and round the chimneys of the. dug-outs, Ten days ago I w»s In an Observation post looking at Machlno-flnn IHII and Other German positions since gloriously captured by the Russians. The mere warmth of human habitation had outlined them as clearly (IS possible, here- by a strip of melted «iew, there because the loopho'cs under the wlilte-shrouded h&ad-coveringf showed black as ink on account of tho back of the trench behind them. And I

had only to look about me to see that the same causes had the same effect on our side also. 1 ud, of course, from the point of view o. :n> aerial scouts, winter gives the flying photographer far better pictures than summer of the positions lying thousands of feet below him. Every inessential detail of the ground Is blotted out. There is no need to pick and choose among the lmir lines on the negative to know which are those tint have their meaning in war. In summer a straight ditcli and a trench look much the same from above. In winter the ditch vanishes in the white background, whereas the trench, walled in, betrays itself at once. Movements of troois become more obvious, and their 'trac -s are more easily distinguished one fnm another. An expert in these matters, lent by France to Russia, told me that he could tell at once, from winter photographs whether cavalry or artillery horses had passed along a road. He would not tell me how, but he showed me photographs .enough to make it very plain how advantageous winter is to the photographer, who in these days is the army's most dseful scout. Against this, of course, must he set t'he difficulty of flying in very cold weather. Even motor-cars in Northern Russia have to wear felt shawls over their bonnets to keep the petrol from freezing. And in the air it is colder still. But in winter the armies are hard put to it to keep hidden. They do their best. A scout in white overail and hood is almost invisible, and a wire entanglement becomes a ghost of itself and very hard to see indeed if all the posts on which the wire is stretched are silver biroli logs with the bark left on. IN THE ARMY CAMPS. Finally, there is the effect of winter on the actual daily life of the front—that cheerful, hardy life midway between civilisation and savagery, that brings out the very best in every man who shares it. In the forest camps those little neat gardens in the sand under the great firs have disappeared. Gone are the little summer houses, the pride of each regiment, where men sat and smoked together in the evenings. There is 110 more walking and talking in the alleys between th<. timbered wigwams. Heavy snow has fallen. The wigwams have lost all grace of design they ever had, and are become white mounds among the trees, with dark entries, like the luit of Esquimos. The dug-outs in a hollow in the low hills, that once looked like a group of chalets in a Swiss valley, show nothing but tinblack holes by wnich men go in and out, and they, look like a rabbit warren in the snow. Inside the dug-outs stoves keep up a tremendous heat, and hospitality rules throughout. Everywhere you arc. told to "Come in and warm up a little." You go in freezing, stay half an hour, drink a glass of tea, and go out again with a fresh store of warmth wrapped up in your sheepskin to face the cold. In the front trenches, in those holes under the earth, men lie together in a lump, and sleep in mass like nests of young rats, ready at any moment to tumble out and man the waiting rifles. Most picturesque of all are the blockhouses, like liugh snow-covered hedgehogs. In summer you go in and cool. In winter. . . .! They are like caves in the transformation scene of a pantomime, the machine gun embrasure?, screened by gigantic icicles that hang from roof to floor. °