FRENCH HOLDING TWO KINDS OF COUNTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 August 1917, Page 7

FRENCH HOLDING TWO KINDS OF COUNTRY.

DESOLATE ASPECT OP THE FLOODED AREA. The sector which the French are stated to bo holding embraces two kinds of country. At Boesinghe, four ■ miles north of Ypres, they are in a district that presents the usual charactastics of the low-lying districts of Flanders. North of it, at a distance of some eight miles from Ypres, the inundations commence. The flooded area varies in width, but is in general soma, two and , a-half to three miles across, except in the neighbourhood of Dixmude,, where the ground is somewhat highar and the 'hostile lines approach one another closely. This town, as is well known, was the scene of heavy fighting, and at one time, the Germans succeeded in effecting a passage over the Yser to the west of it, but were and driven back into tho river with great loss. The place itself is now held by them, but they are unable to debouch from it, since the river crossing in in tile hands of the Belgians. South of it the Belgian line runs along the canalised portion of the river; to the north it follows the line of the railway to Nieuport. The aspect of this part of the line is strangely impressive. Here, in their entrenchments looking out over the conn' try, once the richest soil in Flanders but now willingly surrendered to the sea, are Belgian and French troops, still unvanquished after three years of war. Behind it stretches only a narrow strip, some 10' miles extent, of Belgian soil left to defend, and even in that strip there are few villages or towns which have escaped the anemy's firo. Of tha more important, Nieuport lies in ruins and Furnes has been battered. Aa for tho villages immediately in rear of the line, they are almost razed to the ground War has added desolaton and horror to the natural melancholy of the countryside, which at all times is of tlie niOßt dreary Character. A dead, wind-swept flat, its only features are the villages with their tall chuish steojiiee, and a few trees, chiefly willows, ill bwsi and twisted by the prevailing winds from the sea.

A visitor approaching tha trendies from the nest passes through one battered' village after another, and sses hero and there among the ruins a fwr womoA and children still clinging to wiat is left of their hemes. In front of the line is a waste of water malting into the sky, and the further bank obscured in mitt. The grey expanse is here and there intersected "by a road naming for some distance on an and broken by a few trees and hedge-' rows or the remains of a farm rising up' out of the flood, on which islands the advanced posts of each side are established. The corpses of long-dead German soldiers and the swollen car- j cases of cattle and sheep with legs at ; ck-. ing stiffly into the air, drift almlessly-j about, while large flocks of wild fowls? give the one visible touch of life to thai i dasalate scene. ; Further north is the aee&or of the r saad dunes, where BBitish troops are and were heavily tngagea; ua few weeks ago. Here a desperate: struggle at short range continues fromi day to day, the opposing tranche i be-i iog situated within a few yards of oneanother, Here, instead of xnud water, thu troops have to endure the wind which blows the sand about in stinging clouds so trying to the eyes to necessitate the wearing of moWgoggles. Under the restless drifting sand the configuration of the landscape if. continually altering, fresh dunes being formed at one point, wtile they melt away at another. Pathaps the\ best description of this area of softloolring shapiless white moundu is that given by a French officer, who comparedit to-A land of whipped cream. .