NEW ZEALANDERS IN FLANDERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 December 1917, Page 7

NEW ZEALANDERS IN FLANDERS.

A SPELL BEHIND THE LINES. RETURN TO THE FRONT. (From Malcolm Ross, War Correspondent with the N.Z. Forces in the Field). Belgium, October Z. The country into w'.iich \« name B'.ine woel s after" th« battle of Mrs?incs and the fights at La Basse Villo was one of quiet restfulness and syhan 'beauty. Looked at from any of the heights it seemed one great garden. It was as peaceful as it was picturesque. The flat waterlogged fields of Flanders gave place .to rolling downs, with unharmed little villages nestling amid the woods. On the upland stumble partridges flew with a whirr from your feet, and in clearrunning. waters the speckled trout rose at the brown ephemerae slowly floating down stream. Only there we're not so many fish .now as there were, for war, apparently* takes its toll of fish'- a s of | men. In the words of. the petit bourgeois— "Compris soldat! Grenade! Finish feesh!" Leaving the chateau in which we billeted one- often wi..idered along winding p- < beneath the shade of nob]o trees of v.m and oak and a glorious and stately copper beech with the first hint of autumnal glory already in its leaves, and so across the shallow valley and up the slanting avenue that climbed the opposite ridge. The branches met above, leaving only a tracery of the blue skyv There was an orchard In » sunny dimple of the .vale, and an old'man and his two little grandchildren at work amongst hU pommes and his .pommes 3e terrc. The young men were all away—at Verdun, or on the Craonne, or some other part of the battle-front.

I Having climbed this slope, one came out upon a broad view of timbered downs, chess-boarded with the green of beet, and the brown of stubble and fallow fields. The village had become entirely enveloped in the 'bosom of the dark woods from which only the slender church spire with its Gallic girouette escaped. One could see no soldiers. Thero was no transport visible, though its muffled rumble floated up from the depths below, mingled with an occasional cock-crow from the farms, or the beat of drum where rnseen troops were marching. A train passed, bearing men and material to the front. It left a trail of steamy smoke behind, as the chuffing of its engine and the rumble of its wheels died away j n the distance. Then silence, save for the chirruping of its birds, fell upon the wood, but only to be broken by another reminder of war—the hum of a double-engined plane, with the firing of its engines Momentarily synchronising in a heavier drone.

The weather was mostly fine, with a breeze tempering the warmth of the eTear sun, and tSic pale blue above flecked with rolling masses of cumuli—the fleecy shrapnel puffs left after the thunder of the artillery of the heavens, which, rfter all our progress in gunnery, puts to shame the greatest efforts of the mundane war god. It \va9 amidst such scenes that our force, less those of the Rifle Brigade that was burying cable for our Australian friends, passed some weeks of training, for a forte can never be too well trained for war. In thi s pleasant land there were quiet villages to visit, and pleasant homely people to talk to. And there was hoither poison gas nor bursting shell* nor bombs—except those used for the.fish! What mattered it, therefore, ! that good beer was scarce and egg*! were jfour shillings a dozen; The war wius, [for the time being, a very long way off. In those quiet days many a man's thoughts must have wandered towards home, and of the thousands who delighted in the peace of the bosky hills and daks many a one must have wondered if ever again he would tread the homeward path. As these lines are .being written, to the thunder of the [guns in a new sphere of action, the question of some has, alas, been already answered in the negative. Tho training was varied by trips In motor omnibuses to the seaside for bathing, and it wa9 no uncommon sight to we some of our men, including the Maoris, helping the women and the children and the old men with the ingathering of the late harvest. However, the battle-front of Flanders had suddenly become volcanic again, and was calling for the troops of the farthest Dominions to take their place once more in the firing-line beside the men from Mother England. BELBIUM AGAIN. I _ The Australians were already in the line,, and soon they were at grips witli the enemy. The New Zealandcrs followed, billet-ting -by the way in areas new to them, and at length th'ey , marched across the French border, and so into the rich flat Flanders lands, where French was spoken with a Flemish accent and the signs on the village shops and on the village tombstones were written m a different language. It was new country to them. They had already been in Belgium, but, except for the Brigadu and the Pioneers who went to dig for the French, never so far north. Here the grain Tiad all been garnered j the hops were being picked, and the potatoes dug, while on the brick walls of the cottages the long tobacco leaves were browning In the warm autumn ami. The sound of gunfire, to which for weclcs we had become unused, grew again familiar. Day and night wc could hear the great bombardments in. the hinterland 'beyond the ever-widening salient. Portion of the force billetted In the country near a great aerodrome, where, morning, noon, and night, the air vibrated with the hum of many planes. They swam and gambolled in the air liko fl.sh in a pond, turning over, diving with a spin, and climbing rapidly far above the fields. They performed the most marvellous antics in the air, but the phlegmatic Flemish, quietly picking their hop harvest, had become so blase to all such sights and sounds oi war that they scarcely ever looked up to see what was happening, or what might happen.

j As we neared the area of our last halting place we found the roads alive with a traffic that reminded one of the Somme in the days of the great attack, The march and counter-march of men went on from daylight till dark, hands at the head of the columns playing the old marching tunes, while pipers, after the few preliminary drum beats, threw the stocs over their shoulders, and, with their tartan ribbons proudly fluttering in the breeze, set chanter and drone attune to their wilder Highland strains—"The Cock o' the North." "The Bonnets o' Bonnie Dundee," and pther lilts that for ooneraflnn* have o»F ,, «d iUthiif"

men into the forefront of British tattles the world over.

Then men marched.well. The Pioneers in one day did a twenty-five mile .'march and didn't growl about it. The Maori, who is a cheery optimist, stuck it out well, and at the end of the long day was proud of the feat.

All day long the transport rumbled past—streams of motor lorries, divisional trains, and ammunition columns, light, artillery, and many motor-cars, hurrying with red and blue-tabbed staff officers from armies, corps, divisions, the envy of the foot-slogger, and even of the Brigadiers on horseback. Marching through or with this throng of vehicles were companies, battalions, and brigade..; of men. Occasionally there were blocks in this amazing stream. At times your car got' into a backwater of opposing currents or crawled along, inept, for all its power, in the sluggish current. But with it all thcro was the wonderful organisation that so impressed the beholder of the great battles of the Somme over a year ago now. The traffic, the mastery of the air, and the ever-increas-ing mass of artillery remain the three .wonders of the war.

. After some few days of this trecking we rested awhile in a solid and stolid [Belgian village, and then headed towards the famous .salient -where lies so many thousand English, Canadian, and Gcririai dead. It is an ever-'broadening salient in these days—so broad as almost to make the military term now a misnomer. But its great cemeteries will for a)l time remain one of the finest monuments of British courage and endurance that this world will ever see.

On the morning that wo arrived at our final camp the artillery was thundering as if all the seas of all the worlds in storm were beating on a rock-bound coast. In flights of five, ftnd singly, and 'in twos and threes the planes came and went upon their daring and deadly missions. They did the most aniaziag feats of turtle-turning and spinning noso-div-ing. But they do much more than that behind the enemy lines. The German planes came too, photographing and observing from great- altitudes in the daytime, and dropping bombs from lower heights at night on towns and billets and horse lines. They tried to smash our railways and hold up the traffic upon our roads, and though they toofc their toll of victims, both civil and military, in this they never succeeded, and always ,we had the satisfaction of knowing that for i->very ten homba the enemy dropped on us we gave him back perhaps a double portion. It is a very sad sight to see , men and horses and even women and [children killed and mangled by bursting bombs. One night, just after they had come into Belgium, some of the New Zealand reinforcements suffered, ' and along one of the main Toads some soldiers were hit. Two men in a motor, bicycle with side-car were killed. All 'this goes to show that we need all the planes we can get at the battle front. jOne morning two Boche planes that had crossed the lines opposite Poperinghe, came up against four of our planes. They turned and fled, but almost immediately they ran into some French planes and both Were brought down. It was a thrilling sight to see one of ,the Frenchmen dive after his victim to get the valued trophy of. the black crosses from the wings of the German I plane. He dived so quickly that he oppeared to be crashing to earth. When our people got up to the field where the German plane had crashed, there was the Frenchman, his head bandaged- w.ith a field dressing, calmly 'cutting out the black ;rosses. «

Day after day [he weather continued fine—cool nights ond calm, sunny days. It was an Indian summer, or as the French call it, the Summer of Saifi%*Martin—the summer that comes seemed aa if at last Jupiter Pluvius was on our side, and anxious to make amends for his stoppage of the initial offensive. The traffic went along the roads in clouds of dust, and there was no anxiety about feeding the men or the still more hungry guns. Ammunition went up by the thousand tons, and poured in streams into the ragged Germon line, and nil the hinterland, For every shell the enemy shot at us we seemed to be sending him four or five. It v'as small wonder that, the morale of his officers as well as of his men Was on the downward grade. The morale of our troops was never higher. One night word came that our Second Brigade had to go into the line. Others wo knew would soon follow. They were going to take their nart in the battle for another ridge. There was no man in all the Army that doubted that the enemy would be driven off that ridge. THE GRAFENSTAFEL RIDGE. MORAL OF THE ENEMY. 6th. October. The capture of tho Grafenstafel Ridge, of which I gave a hint in my last despatch, is-now an accomplished fact. No one doubted for one moment that the ridge would fall before the New Zealand attack, just as Messines and other strong positions had fallen before. The New Zcalanders in this battle followed in the wake of other British troops who had cleared the ground for the attack on Grafenstafel. Hills 35 and 37 bad fallen before their onslaughts. But in many places there had been bitter struggles, and' some minor positions had been lost and won again and again. The reinforced ooncrete emplacements and the so-called "pill-boxes" were obstacles that hindered the former advance, for they seemed almost impervious to the' heaviest gun-fire we could bring to bear upon them. Many of them were made of reinforced concrete through whic>. steel wire, rounded and as thick as a man's little linger, was interlaced. This gave them a certain resiliency that seemed to absorb, or counteract, the shock l of fairly heavy direct hits. In the larger emplacements the concrete, five and six feet in thickness, was further strengthened by railway iron. ' But in spite of all this, several of the garrisons had succumbed to direct "hits, and as many as twenty dead could be seen inside the supposed havens of refuge. The "pill-boxes" were oblong in shape, with a slit in them that gave an angle of about 30 degrees for machine-gun fire. ■They varied in height from four feet six to about six feet. There were some in which a man could stand wpright, others in which an average-sized man would have to maintain a stooping position. The lower half of the structure was embedded in the ground, but there still remained sufficient height, for the deadly machine-guns to hit the advancing troops about the middle of the. body. Tho best method of attack was for the infantry to endeavour to evade the machine-gun fire by dodging from : crater to crater while advancing slantwise towards either flank. In this way they could get round to the back door, and once there the "pill-box" and all that it contained was theirs. At that Ktage tho German gunners suddenly became aware of the fact that their fancied stronghold had in reality become a ■death-trao. and—well, the subsequent "<KB, '"terestod tjjein no

more. Some/of these cinplaeemcnta were said to have steel doors, but on the part of the .battlefield over which 1 wont I saw no such doors. There was only an open doorway through Which the gunners could be easily bombed once our men sot round. Some were tilted on one side where a shell had lobbed just under them in the soft earth. Others had been hit, but'the shell had bounced oh", chipping, but not breaking them. If a nine-point-two Bhell hit them, even that might not Emash them up, hut the shock in moat eases would be so severe as to kill the entire garrison. Still, a "pill-box" is not an easy target even for a five-point-nine, and, generally, it would be only a ehante shot that knocked them out. Several of the enemy strongholds we afterwards turned to our own advantage, using' his baulks of timber and »and-bags to guard the back, doors from ehell splinters. THE RIDGE DESCRIBED. In front of Hills 3o and 37 the j ground dipped slightly td n shallow trough, where once ran the little Haneheek, now so pockmarked and torn with our ( terrible h're as to be almost unrecognisable as a stream. The trough was simply a piece of waterlogged ground, with a trickle running from shell' crater to Later, when the rain came the water increased in depth in these shell holes, but the trough was never a very formidable obstacle in our path. The whole countryside here had been whipped with such a hail of sheila as to be absolutely unrecognisable as farm lands. The steadings themselves had been blotted out, as had also the taain road leading to Zonnebeke. The trees that remain rooted in the earth were. only skeletons ■ Of their former selves. In places a low rubble of red brick marked the spot where, for generations, the simple Belgian peasant families had lived in peace and in comparative comfort, ' ' '

The dominating feature of all this country is the long Passchandaele .Ridge, Almost a continuation of the Mesaines Ridge, running In a north-easterly direction, and rising to heights of up to 215 ft above sea level. British and Australian troops had already taken some of the commanding heights on the ridge farther south.

But in this fight the New Zealamlcrs were not concerned directly with the Passchendaele Ridge. Their objective was the Grafenstafel Ridge, which, like n tapering peninsula, jutted out from higher >P«sschendaele and rose in the plateau-like Abraham Heights to an altitude of 126 ft above„sea level., This is In itself no great height, and when it Is remembered that the place from which ttfe attacked is 82ft above the sea level there is left only a height of some 44ft to be e]imbed. And this point of nt< tack was at such a distance as to makof the rise a very gradual one. To a New Zealander, used to the mountains or even the foothills of the South Island range*, this land would not be called a ridge at all. It would, be called o rolling plain. Even the Passehendaele would scarcely appeal to bis imagination as a ridge worthy of a name. But In dll countries heights, to. the inhabitants, *nd to the map-makers thereof are merely, relative;. and, in warfare, it can never be forgotten that even such insignificant heights as these are of the greatest importance anil that once' taken and garrisoned they arc not easily won back. T merely make the comparison to give the New Zealand reader some idea of the nature of the ground, and so that he will not picture in fiis mind's eye pur gallant troops storming steep slopes aikl heights such as frowned down upon us at Gallipoli. The Clrafenstafel Ridge was a smaller edition of the Messines Ridge, with a still smaller village on its crest—a village that even before the attack had been reduced to a few heaps nf building rubble, fit now only for a garden path. The region in \ which the New Zenlanders attacked is historic ground and (here are names on the map that are well remembered by survivors from the • first battles in the Ypres region. There is valuable ground that we loßt there in 1 April, 1015, when French and British troops experienced the choking agony of the first' cloud of German poison gas. It has fallen to the lot of New Zealand to win back some of that ground, won by the Germans through methods that we should never have thought of,' much, less have adopted.

The taking of the Grafenstafel Ridge \ and' Abraham heights with other high ground along the line of attack is, no doubt, a stepping-Btone to other conquests, and the final conquest of the whole of the Passchendftele Ridge. If' the enemy should be driven off this ridge we shall have the command of the whole countryside that he for so long has en> joyed in Belgium. It has given nim a tremendous advantage in the past, and it still gives him a great advantage in the struggle that is now going on. But pushed off it he will surely be if our armies make the attempt. On the other side there, are only a few isolated heights and beyond them the great plain of Flanders stretching away for many miles. It will be dreary ground for his -ill-fed armies to winter in.'!