STEMMING THE TIDE

Taranaki Daily News, 3 June 1918, Page 7

STEMMING THE TIDE

QUICK'MOVES AND STRENUOUS MARCHING. EFFECTIVE WORK AT A CRITICAL TIME. STRANGE INCIDENTS IX OPEN WARFARE. (From Captain Malcolm Rosa, with the New Zealand Forces in tlie Feld.) No. I. 31st March. It is now no secret that at one stage of the Great German onslaught on the British Armies along a sixty-mile front there were critical days and situations in certain sectors that gave cause for anxiety. The New Zealanders arrived in the nick of time to stem the tide that might have poured through a threatened lireach in the line. I purpose ir. this article to tell, as far as it may now be told, tho story of their advent upon the =cene, and the gallant manner in which l hey not only held the enemy at bay, but also drove him back from a vantage point that he held along a limited sector of the line they had estidbli^hed. On tho day that the Germans launched their vost ofl'insive the New Zealanders were out of the line. They were receiving instruction at one of the military schools and practising manoeuvres in cpon pleasant country well behind the line Ir; the afternoon word carae through that they were to be ready to | move at short notice In two days tli? brigades were entraining. Everyone was keen to get away, and the news that we were going south to take our part in the! great 'battle was received by one Canterbury battalion with cheering.

For some days now orders and again new orders showered upon us. That was unavoidable, for the position was rapidly n»'l continually changing fronf day to. dsv. I motored from a quiot little village in Northern France to the old town of Corbie. The Germans •■helling and hombing several towns on the way, and there was a pathetic exodus of tht l civilian-population, mostly old men and women and chddren, taking will, them, in such vehicles as they could muster. their bedding and the household "nods <liny treasured most,, or that v.-ould he most useful to them aa refugees in another town. Some women and children there were who could not join :u tiie procession. Killed or wounded l.v the enemy fhell=. their activities had come to a sudden stop. One felt most »orrv for the old women—frail, bent creatures marching very slowly with the it id of a stick, or sitting wonderingly I'V the roadside with their few belongDigs tied up in a shawl. These poor people, at least. -but for German lust of power, would have been able to spend their few remaining years in peace and perhapr. in comfort. Rut very many (here were who refused to budge. They were prepared to stick it out so long as the invaders were at arm's length, and lhc British and their own brave fathers ■-.nil Jsrottw.*. husbands and lovers, they knew full well were doing all that was po-'.r.iblc to stem the advancing tide ("are. no doubt, has laid a heavy haid on the shoulders of some of these. The Hi tie children, vho still played hop•wntcti in the shadow of a shattered house, were care-free They were growing up with the war, and when it is all over, and the soldiers, with the now hupiiaw and rumbling guns and other wonderful mechanical transport, cease to ci-iwd their streets, there will be a straiiL'e blank in their daily life. It is sad enough to send armies to fight in another country; but to have the war iu oncV. country is a terrible thing. On the way south we passed gangs of ficrman prisoners that had beer, working on our roads being taken bv sentries farther to the rear. Our own labor batiaHoiis also were going farther back. On the way down we met Bean, the Australian war correspondent, who gave us the latest news- The situation was very critical. The enemy was coming on, and although he had outrun his artillery he was. pressing forward through sheer weight of numbers Flers, which the New Zenlanders hajl, with some English troop-; captured'in the Somriie battle, was already his, and our line ran over wrll-Vnown ground to us at Montauban. Albert was already threatened Farther south there were said to be big dents in onr line. The next few days might seal the fate of France and of the British Empire We heard also the astounding news, which few believed, that Peris was beinrr shelled from a distance of over (10 miles.

All Hi;-', gave us food for reflection as we pursued our journey southward. We skirted Amiens, and eventually reached h place where the New Zealand Headquarters were opened with such memof the Stall' as had arrived, and one soiitarv clerk. We had some difficulty in finding billets and we had outrun our food and blankets The enemy was quite close to u«, and still coming on. The people of the house where we established our mess had fled with their children that morning or the day before; H.nt the food woman who was left m charge of the house cooked us an excellent dinner, for which we were truly thankful. The Staff was soon busy, with tclcr-ims and telephone messages, and we were visited bv officers from the mrp* at"! the nr'iiv —cool young Englishmen, who kept their heads, and even i!ieir sense of in this crisis in the nation's history. ' liie situation, said, was still serious For fame few davs no verv definite opinion about it could he given; hut already there were signs of exhaustion in the enemy milks find we --till had faith in the BritMi and ihe Frojieh armies. The Staff officers worked hour after hour, and, although thev had had little sleep for the past forty-eight hours, they toiled on cheerfully with their one tired and sleep? clerk.

Just as we had thought ourselves established in the little town, and were thinking—such of us a? could get it—of sleep, a came through that we had to shift, to another village north of Albert. Tt was apparent that we "ere being side-stepped to fill a threatened gap in the line. Through this gap the enemy, had he only known, and had he hot been so exhausted, mijht have swarmed. Fad he taken this tide at the flood he might, perchance, havo led' hip troops o r> to fortune. lii;i to this point one could not but admire his wonderful impetus—his energy and resource His sacrifice, we knew, was sreat. We loft in our car shortly before one in the morning, on a clear, cold, moonlight night AD this country is orisa-

crossed with roads in ar. -extraordinary way, bo we drove slowly, and, at the junctions, stopped to consult the map and the signposts, for otherwise we might easily run into the advancing enemy, and find ourselves on the wrong side of the fence. The two Stall' officers with me had their revolvers. Jly only weapon was a mashie, with which I had been practising in our quiet seclusion of the week Wore with one of the aforesaid Staff officers behind the line. According to the Regulations, a war correspondent is not allowed to go armed except in savage warfare! In the present war the irony of this regulation has often occurred to me; but so long as it is there, and so long as German warfare is not supposed to be savago warfare, one must play the game. Ono Staff officer and one of the signals had to go to open the new Headquarters, while another Staff officer and others of the signals remained behind to keep open their old office till the new was established. In war there must be no break in such communications, for one never knows what a day or an hour may bring forth. We fetched up at our new Headquarters at 2.30 a.m, foodless and blanketless. The General and his A.D.C. had already arrived. There they continued their strenuous life all through the night, close to the advancing enemy, and not knowing the moment wo might have to fall back again. We slept on the hard floor in our clothes and boots—except in those intervals when the cold kept us awake. All this lam writing down now because the public c ls apt to poke fun at "the guilded Staff," and the man in the trenches often asks: What do the Staff do? and what is a G. 5.0.1, or an A.A. and Q.M.G.? The answer is that, next to the General and the Brigadiers, they are the men with the burden and the responsibility upon their shoulders, and that since the war began they have been toiling day and night, Saturdays and Sundays included, except for brief intervals of leave. We had two miserable days and nights at this Headquarters. Already the owner of the house had sent his wife and family away, and on the last day he himself very wisely fled. The General's A.D.C. and his batman helped in the kitchen, which was also our dining-room. Bully beef and biscuits once again appeared on the menu. The Germans were unpleasantly close. The threat of a gap in the line was still an unpleasant reality. But we were not downhearted. Our kit arrived, but we deemed it wise to send most of it back to the rail-head. We had shifted to this place not a whit too soon. Within twenty hours we heard that our last Headquarters was in the front line, and that places we had passed on the way up were in enemy hands. We got away from this Headquarters also none too soon. As we were preparing to shift a shell burst in a house near by, and a cloud of brickdnst and smoke rose slowly above the ruin. It was followed by a second and third, with splinters of shelj raining down upon the just and unjust alike. One piece found a vulnerable spot in the heel of our O.C. Signals, so, for the time being, we are minus his services; but otherwise we escaped scot free. Each one who had now no particular duty to perform stood not upon the order of his going, but went at once. It was just a little bit too close to the line, that Headquarters, but it answered our purpose while it lasted.

On the way to our new Headquarters we saw sections of various units that had been retiring before the German hordes. Some had come a long way and were tired and battle-worn. There were men from the Naval Division, men from various English counties with distinctive dialects, and some kilted infantry who had fought with great gallantry. Tired as they were, these latter came with a firm stride along the road, some steel-helmeted, others with bonnets on their heads, and, like most Scotsmen, they were non-committal. I tisked a burly sergeant-major if they had had a bad time, and a flicker of a smile spread over his unshaven face as he remarked, "Nae sae bad." Hut all the time these were going back there was the cheering Bight of other divisions coming in—some with their bands playing. Guns were also coming up — a cheering sight to the infantry who were to take up the new line

We heard that Albert had fallen. It had been badly bombed the night before and the streets were strewn with dead horses. We felt a little anxiety about the position there, but,, later, heard that just in front of it the line had held. The civilians who had gone back there had hurried away once more, and for some days past various commodities, including good wine, had been going cheap. Our Y.M.C.A. representative, whom the King had recently honored, had been on a pilgrimage there, and had reaped a small harvest of sugar and other things left behind by tlie other Y.M.C.A. men. In a field beside the road the personnel of a tank were at their breakfast beside their prehistoric-looking monster, while overhead the swift cavalry of cloudland came and went.

There were few New Zealand troops on the road. They had already secured the threatened gap—a long, thin khaki line, somewhat tired, too, but cheerful and eager. The day before, one had watched them marching in at the end of many weary miles and concentrating in a fold of the hills. In the early morning, while a - cutting wind was blowing, I wandered through their bivouacs. Some were breakfasting, and there was no lack of food. Others were asleep on the cold ground with onlv their water-proof sheets and leather jerkins to protect them from the damp earth and the keen March wind. A column of tanks came past across the road and sidled up a slope, then took the road again. At a bend a hurrying motor tried conclusions with one of them, and came off second best, to the amusement of the onlookers and the dismay of the. motorists. In another hollow a battalion of the Rifles was fnlling-in for the march, their band playing a lively ouickstep. On the slope above the Maoris were making themselves comfortable on heaps of firtree branches, just as they might havo done in their own land on beds of scrub or fern during a hunt after pigs or wild horses, wood pigeons or kiwis. One stalwart tribesman came down the village road swinging by the head a dead fowl that would soon be plucked and in the morning pot. Probably he had purchased it in the village. The Maori is ever a good forager. In a little mud-floored building I came upon Headquarters and found friends, including a brigade major who was washing down some bread and jam with a. welcome cup of tea. He had been into, or almost into, Beaumont Hamel on a bicycle with the enemy all about him, but he had had his most interesting day in France, a'" l told » merry tale of his experiences It was open warfare at last, and lie seemed to

be thoroughly enjoying the novel adventure. A day or two later a little wooden cross marked his grave near a new Brigade Headquarters. He had received orders to report to a Higher Authority. And with him had passed liis brigadier into the Elysian Fields of the Great Unknown, where there are no more battles to be fought. With honors well won, each had given his all for England, and, already, other valiant men had taken up the burdens they had laid down. (To be continued.)