POLDERHOEK CHATEAU.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 February 1918, Page 7

POLDERHOEK CHATEAU.

OTAGO AND CANTERBURY MEN IN ACTION, .^.wi-i., .STIFF FIGHTING AGAINST STRONG POSITIONS. _^_. BRAVERY OF OFFICERS AND MEN. ; 4M- (From Malcolm Ross). Belgium, Bee. 8. After the Passchendaele fighting the New Zealanders went back to that quiet retreat which I described briefly in an article written on the-3rd of October, and there pent three peaceful weeks in training and recuperating- Recently they came again into the line not far from Ypres. They passed through the famous ancient city, still strangely fascinating with its ruined houses and the shattered walls and towers of its cathedral and its cloth hall, which, surely, should be preserved for future generations as an object lesson of German ruthlossness and destructivene'ss. You can motor well past the town now, and for some, distance along the Menin-road. Leaving your car you walk along a broad road and over zig-zagging duckwalks across the open to our new front line. On every side are names that will remain for ever famous in the war history of this generation. Zilhbeke, St. Elois, Hill CO, Beceleare. Sanctuary Wood, and the Chateau de la Hooghe are among them. Of the Chateau, of the hamlet of the same name, and of the surrounding woods naught remains". They have ceased to exist- The Belgian nobleman, six generations of whose, family have lived in the chateau, would not now be able to trace the confines of his demense. His treasures of art, indeed all his belongings, have gone the way of the chateau. But the soil has become sacred to the British Empire. "Thrilling scenes," says Beckles Wilson, the Canadian war correspondent, "have been enacted in this park—the flower of the chivalry of England and France have perished in its defence. . . It was to Hooghe that were borne the dead bodies of Fitzclarence, Cavendish, Wellesley, Wyndham, Cadogan. 'Ciordon-Lennox, TTay, ICinnaird, Bruce, and Fraser. and not far from there they are chiefly interred. Close at hand also is the grave of the brave young Prince Maurice of Battcnberg." Echoes of the Middle Ages and stirring memories of the immediate past crowd in upon yon as you go through the shattered town of Ypreß, and the desolated lands and hamlets. In the salient the sacred dust of men from the confines of Empire—cf men from Australia and N T cw Zealand, has been mingled with this Belgian soil. SCENES OF DESOLATION. It was the dawn of a frosty morning when we went through Ypres on the way to our front-line trenches- Not far beyond the spot where we had to leave our car we entered upon a scene of desolation such as it is difficult to picture' or imagine. On either side of the broad road the fretted earth had been torn ngain and yet agein by German and by British shell-fire. Waves of battle ha'd ebbed and flowed about a land that but a few short years ago had held smiling hamlets and green fields and woods. Now, over thousands of acres the trees and the grass and the houses had been wiped almost clean away. There were, it is true, a fpw rubble heaps of reddish brown brick denoting where houses had stood, and there were the branchless and broken trunks of trees that told where woods had been, but nowhere could you see any grass. The earth was bare and brown. It is land that has been watered by the blood of brave men, but for many a long day there will be no harvest but the harvest of victory, for y so sorely has the land been scarred by trench and dug-out, by shell-hole anil mine crater, that no plough can surely enter it in our day and generation. THE ROAD TO DEATH. Not on any part of the Belgian, British, or French front—l have not been to Verdun—have I seen anything comparable with this destruction of hamlet, wood, and meadow land. The shell craters are rim to rim over square miles of countryside. In places even the edges of individual craters have been blown away with subsequent shell-fire, until they form irregular ponds with miniature peninsulas and archipelagoes of little clayey islands. This morning the ground was frozen hard and the ice was an inch thick on all the ponds. Men had to break through with aii axe or some stout stake to get water. Since the frost other shells had burst, scattering the ice on the road and the frozen clay. ..And then.the watM had frozen once more. There were ponds that had in their ice a crimson stain. On either side of the road was the debria of furious war—broken waggons and gun-lim-bers, bicbed-wire, unexplodcd shells, and dead horses wit'- tvo-'.th agape. ' Ail were frozen into the brown soil, immovable r "u- sun i'?ni3 up over the bank of smoky grey horizon mist thai prevails in winter time, throwing all this battle wreckage into greater relief. It was through such a scene that our men marched once more to the front but one now passed it by without a shudder, for custom has staled the infinite variety of its horror. -Of the pro triiding limbs oofr f the hideous grinning face of some dead German, half buried, or disinterred by sonic now explosion, little notice is taken, for such are or dinary sights: in our daily life. Beyond the road the tract wound across the open, and steel-helmeted men passed to and fro carrying up material to strengthen the position we had won, or returned empty handed for stakes and wire, for ammunition, food, and water. Across the shell-torn land before the frost had come it was difficult to walkin the sticky' mud, but now you could cut off corners and walk with ease—so hard waa the frozen ground- Rising gradually we approached the great mound or "butte" where the enemy in his underground, stoutly-timbered wai. Ron had withstood our heaviest shelling. The German gunners shelled it persistently. From the Butte you got a wonderful View of the country we had conquered, and 0| t-li:" positions we have still to conquer. One marvelled more and moio at tl»t. valor of the British armies in the field in gaining such strong positions. The Germans may drive back on .Italian i Army corrupted by insiduous propaganda, he may treat with impunity the , armies of Russia in thethroes of red re- j vjVf'on, but all the time it must be a ' ga'luig thought to him, in spit.: of all his generations of military Dr-ymraUuii, '

he cannot beat -thp-Britishf-and the French, nay, more,., that lie must give l way, from positions' that -he thought impregnable, before the .valor and the skill of France and England. TO Tilt; FRONT LINE. We pass across tlie open, threading our way between the frozen pools that have filled the shell holes. Ahead, in the direction in which we are going, the German balloons, high in the air, arc observing. Planes Jly overhead, droning as they go. A; times there is the burst of machine-gun lire from the Bky, where friend and foe are engaged in uncertain combat- You pass beside broken machines that have crashed to earth, i>r that have, in the words of the communique, been ''brought down out of control," and think of the fate of daring ■pilot and his observer. Do their graves He near at hand? Are they lying sorely battered in some base hospital? Or are they in the air again, looking for fresh adventure'? We are getting near the front now, and drop into a communication trench—the first we have seen in an four's walk. Walking across the frozen hummocks has been, like walking across the lateral moraine of some great glacier, except that the frozen clay and sand' are less slippery than the glacier ice, and the color is brown instead of dark grey. Inside the tunnels of the butte, wnen a battle is raging, the noise of the artillery is like the continual, dull roar of the waters as heard in some seaside cave. We have passed a strong line of trench and wire, blown out of all semblance of a line by our own artillery. We have noted the strong square hlocklwuses' and ''pillboxes" that sheltered the German machine guns ana their gunners, and again we wonder,at the feat of British arms that has crowned this ridge with victory. Presently we are in the front line trench. It, too, is narrow and sandy and dry. As yet it is not revetted. At times the enemy sends a few shells to it across the waste of No Man's Land, and at night he mixes his shelling with poison gas. We have passed Battalion Headquarters, with its telephone wh-e leading to a hole in the ground. Wo lift the flap of the door and peer into tiie gloom where the British commander is working by the light of a candle. It is in the open, and is an uninviting habitation. For the time licing, it is home to these greatly daring men from the Antipodean isles But our Battalion Commands are philosophers, if not fatalists, anrt one has even heard tmem in such circumstances quoting the refrain of the modern song: "Any old place where I hang my hat Is home, sweet home, to me." Only hats are not taken so far afield. Helmets of steel have taken their place, and the gas helmet is also very close at hand. On this morning of which I am writing the front line was comparatively quiet. A few enemy shells lobbed away to the left, there was an occasional stutt?r of machine-gun Are on the right, bt'v only one shell felt near us. It was one aimed at the Butte on our return journey Vet there are +.?ines when the road and the tracks tp which vr- lave come are not healthy places for a soldier, let alone a civilian. A battalion commander told me that he had cut out a hundred yards on that road the other day in as good a linw as he had ever done it in his best sprinting days. With one of his officers, l.e had got caught between two barrages,, but, by timing the fall of the shells, they decided that tlf-y could just get through, and, making a dash for it, succeeded. The old idea of strolling unconcernedly forward in the face of shell fire is nowadays abandoned by the wise men. When the shell fell near us on cur return journey a Staff officer who was with me ducked. "I always duck," he said, "I've seen a man killed at five or six hundred yards by a splinter." In the trench our snipers were constantly on the outlook. In their own language, they had got the Boche snipers down. With their boots swathed in sandbag wrappings, to keep their feet warm, they looked like Shackletons in the South Polar regions. Some others were sleeping in little dug-outs in the comparatively dry sandy soil, .with their feet protruding into the trench through the sacking doorway. One man was coaxing a piece of solidified alcohol into flame to make himself a warm drink. He had not been able to sleep much because of the cold, but lie was quite cheery and interested, and intent on the operation in hand. The Germans were quite close, and had 'been putting out wire in the night time on the edge of what had been a wood. Our men sometimes got a glimpse of them in parties of twos and threes, and then the rifles of the snipers rang out. The Divisional General with whom I made the trip was busy all this time studying Die situation 'He likes to see for himself, for that way success lies. In the course of the morning we got extended views far into the enemy's terrain. On the horizon on the left front there loomed up a ridge that will not be easily taken. We saw Moorslcde, undestroyed. amidst its trees; the broken buildings of Ghelevelt and its ridge; I and, fronting it, Polderhoek Chateau, | near which brave men of the New Zealand Division have fallen. But of this ■ more anon- i