OUR NEW LINE.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1917, Page 8

OUR NEW LINE.

THE CHANGE OVER. BRITISH SOUTH OF THE SOMME. (By Philip Gibbs, in Lond'.n Daily Telegraph). British Headquarters, France, Feb. 17. The phrase "South of the Sommu" used in Sir Douglas Haig's communique a night or two ago gives the first official mention of the impdrhtnt fact—kno-.vn to most of us here—that the British line now extends for some distance, beyond the ground held by lis during the Battles of the Sommc. We rave talrc-n over from the French troops the country which goes down by Saiily-Sflillisol and sweeps southward past Peromie. It is country for which the French fought durigg July and August last with great gallantry, and an invincible enthusiasm which swept the enemy back step by step, trench by trench, village by village, after hard and bloody lighting. Some, of the village, like that of La | Maisonnette, changed hands several times, the enemy delivorhg heavy coun-ter-attacks, and" the French had to fight their way forward under the direct observation of the enemy, who looks down upon all this district from the high plateau of Mont St. Quentin above Peronne, so high and stark and staring np there that men are horribly conscious of the vigilance upon them, knowing that they have no cover unless they go below ground. i BRITISH AND FRENCH TROOPS.

11l the early days of the Somme battics, when .1 used to go up to sec our own bombardments, I saw all this sweep of ground on fire for miles with our great belt of high explosives; and the "rafale"' of the French soij.wnte-qninzes and the tattoo of the French machine-gun fire came up to shock against our own uproar of guns. But it was only the other day. when our troops took over from tlie French, that I went into this territory and saw this other stretch of great destruction belonging, to the battlegrounds of Europe. I saw it with the eyes of a man accustomed to the destruction of war, who seems to have spent half his life tramping over its dirtiness and desolation, and able to compare the differences between one graveyard and another with something like an expert's eye, cold and critical of details in ruin, and litter, and the earth's upheaval. Yet here was something new in effect; tl.o the wide expanse of blasted ground, the look of the broken villages, not so destroyed as those further north, the regular belts of shell craters, the burrowings of grand armies of men, aroused a new interest to-senses rather deadened by repetition of blighted scene?. On the way there was a little drama ir. the roads—human life and an hour or two of history. British troops were going into this country of tortured earth, and French troops were coming out. They eyed each other, these mud-colored men in khaki and these' mud-colored men in blue. They did not cheer eaeh other or pass remarks. They measured eac'i other's physique, summed up each other's fighting look—approved and passed. Our gunners came up the roads with then batteries, urging on their - horses over rough ways. They were bard, grim lads, very businesslike. French transports lurched over the ruts the other way, aivl their drivers looked at the gunners and the inarching columns with grave eyes. Sitting up the banks of chalk cliffs, all honeycombed with dug-outs,, were the last of the French signallers and engineers. I looked into some of their eyes and saw an enigmatical smile, there a? they stared'down upon our men, whose steel hats were all wet and shiny, and whose breath was like a fog about them.

TERRA INCOGNITA. . The Frenchmen know the country, the places which are shelled most, the Dead Men's Corners, the cross-roads of ill ■ fame. The English boys would soon, know. , . Further on there, was no life. It was a dead country, in which nothing moved, what life there was here was hidden below ground—deep into the chalk, below the ruins of wrecked villages, in trenches and dug outs. I went with two friends to this new part of our line. It was unknown country to us. and we had no guidance. We wero innocents abroad, like the first men in the moori, and though we were aware of danger about us. of something damnable and sinister in the vM'y stillness of the. air and this great loneliness, we did not know the exact localities of peril nor the greatness of it. We were fools of ignorance. It was only the look in the. eyes of two officers who suddenly appeared on the edge of one of the villages, and then jumped down into a deep trench and disappeared, which give, us a sudden warning that perhaps wo were "asking for it" by standing where we did with an open car. Afterwards we know that we had "asked" for it, and had only just escaped getting it. The enemy had (lung fdur hours' full of high explosives into the place before our arrival. It is a place upon which the guns are trained. Pome of the villages further back avo full of morbid interest. It seems that '(lie Last Trump had been sounded about Dompierre, for in the cemetery there the graves had yawned upon and the bone; of the dead have been cast up. VaulU have been opened hy shell-fire, and the secrets of the dead made public to the passers-by. Here before battle each grave was marked by an iron erucifi.v. Those, crosses have been flung down, and scattered over the carl h are the iron images of Christ, with broken limb,-,, or headless, or twisted as the bodies and souls of living men are twisted when they are patched up after war. RUIN OF VILLAGES. The church of Dompierrc has disappeared off the face of the earth. Not one stone remains to mark its site. 1 went down into the cellars of this plac!, once a fine, village with high, strong barns for the harvests from tile fielas around, and an old, big-walled farmhouse which was half a chateau. Some of the barns still stood as four walls pierced by monstrous holes. The cellars were not hidden, but thoir vaults were exposed amidst a tumble of earth swept some months ago by high explosives. The French fought their way here with machine-guns ard rifles. Many gallant French boys fell among these ruins. In the fields hereabouts are great numbers of shell fragments, and uncxploded shells and aerial torpedoes. By the belts of shell-craters and the brok;n trendies and the blown-in dug-outs one sees how the French forced their way forward in great bounds between the lines of their fire. Fay has been swept away, and its little cemetery is like that of Dompierre, upheaved, so that the hours of men lie loose. Flaucourt, very close to the lines, is a,place where terror Uvea

and lurks along the juain. street, between the wild litter of. its, houses. As wc passed them the trench-mortars were .it work to our left, .with heavy crashes. Biaches and Estrijqs are bit's of ruin which arc worked into our defensive, system, and behind them, stretch away the white leprous-looking fields of upturned chalk; where armira of men have dug holes for their hiding-places, and tjic ruins of many other places than t have named in my list, because one is like another, and all are destroyed.