THE GREAT ATTACK.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1917, Page 6

THE GREAT ATTACK.

EXACTLY AS IT APPEARED. (By C. E. W. Bean, Official Correspondent with the Australian Forces.) BRITISH HEADQUARTERS. France, June, 9. There was never such a spectacle in warfare as the attack on Messines .Ridge. One watched it as it were from an armchair looking across on to tho stage. Here is tho exact picture as we saw it hour by hour. It was dark when I went to call for the New Zealand War Correspondent Everywhere along the road one passed small columns of fully, loaded men moving silently through the night—New Zealanders, Australians, British. At New Zealand Headquarters there were lights in the mess room and a pot of tea was always ready on the brightly lit table inside. As we motored towards the front everything was in the most perfect order. I never saw a hint or suspicion of a hitch. Suddenly on the dark flats we ran into a gas stream »—out of it —into a second gas stream. So the German was shelling these regions with gas and tear shell. Where we left the car the gas had thinned; hut as we walked there began to fall around, almost as softly as the raindrops that precede a thunderstorm, showers of small shell from distant field guns. They seemed to be sprinkled all over the country as if through a garden sprayer. The soft whistle and pat-pat of the little bursts was continuous on every side. The country was thick with a musty smell as of chloroform, sandwished between strong whiffs of lavender smelling tear shell, and occasionally the pungent mustard of some other poison. Long after we reached our trench this hosing of the country with shell steadily continued.

The particular corner to which we made our way was for that night occupied by an Auckland battalion. Before us straight across the valley, about two thousand yards away, was Messines—we could see the dull shellbursts in the duat of the ridge, and occasionally a flare went up from the face of it. Sometimes flares dropped far away behind it; they must have been where the British line curled round it in the Ypres salient far to the left.

MOMENTS OF INTENSE ANXIETY. Those were moments of intense anxiety to the onlookers. Would the Ger~ mans see our movement and guess that the attack was immediately imminent? At ten minutes past two at points of tho front a flare of quite a different sort shot into the air very straight and high, and the brilliant light sailed slowly down—it took a good minute and a half to come to earth. Our big guns seemed to quieken at the same time, but nothing \came from the German except the same pat, pat, pat of the gas shell and the occasional lily-like white light illuminating No Man's Land. A partially gassed man passed up the trench. "The—," he said, "burst one in the bay." Then when all seemed to he progressing unbelievably well, with only eighteen minutes to go, two green and two yellow flares shot suddenly into the sky. As they settled one noticed that they fell behind the ridge. They must be from the extreme left of the British line away in front of Ypres. Immediately, flare after flare curved over the horizon in that far corneryellow, green, then Ted, and whole sheafs of white. Something must have been seen there. Every German field gun throwing gas shell stopped suddenly. Presently low flashes over the skylino in that direction showed that a German barrage had come down there already. Could it be the Germans had discovered the left of our attack, or was it some feint of ours away beyond the left—perhaps a raid from the salient. / Anyway, everything is perfectly peaceful on our front. Five minutes after they had ceased, the gas shell began to slip down again quite normally. Never was shell-fire so welcome.

THE FIRST ALARM. Twelve minutes to go. A big New Zealander has come along the trench. "Come, you blokes," he said, "tucker —any of you not had your breakfast." Big dixies of tea had been carried along the trench some time before, and the men had heen munching and yarning in the dark. The pat, pat, pat of gas shells continued. Nine minutes to go. Still undiscovered. A bright round moon. The first warm streaks of dawn are just showing above Messines ridgo straight ahead of us. There is no question where that was. Directly in front of the Australians and New Zealanders. A machine-gun starts —then a seconft joins in—then a third. A second green flare goes up. The three machine-guns nre hard at it. A big shell burst's near by. Fair in the middle of the dark slope opposite a single rifle flashes likean electric spark. There is no questions they have seen something.

■'"■; AT LAST. ■'"• """ Two minutes to go. The machineguns have petered out into silence. The hill slope is as peaceful as it ever was. Three of our big guns have fired —others follow within a second or two, somewhat as a man quickens his first steps when he starts to run. Then the whole trench wall rocked and thumped again. Far away to the left a huge ilnll red bubble, covered with a grey slag, suddenly grows and then bursts, throwing a rosy red underflow on some thick cloud hanging above it. Then'ahother bursts beside it, and another. The ground rocks and sways and rocks along before there arrives the tremendous delayed detonation. Brilliant sheafs of some molten substance beside the mines, then more mine bursts within a second or two further left behind the ridge; simultaneously three similar heavy, red bursts away on the right. My God, what a stage management! It happened in less time than it takes to tell. It was followed by an immediate simultaneous roar of machine-gun fire. Not a chatter, but a single rip into uproar. And then the bombardment came down and crowned it. For just two hours from that moment one might as well have sat down in the trench with one's back to the fitrht. There was nothing distinguishable to see or hear. The whole valley was full of noise and dense with deep grey smoke. The barrage which one expected did not come on that trench. A stray rifle bullet or two flew over. Occasional shells fell near. One could hear machine-suns chattering through

the fog, but they gradually ceased. Th& few white and red flares which overtopped the duat grew rarer and rarer until they were clearly only rising beyorid the ridge. The men in the trench put on their kit. The order came to fix bayonets. An officer moved"'along the parapet. They scrambled out, formed up, and were quickly lost in the smoke. We turned to our breakfast. What we saw when the fog gradually cleared must be the matter for another article.