BEYOND THE HINDENBURG LINE.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 January 1919, Page 3

BEYOND THE HINDENBURG LINE.

FIGHTING IN OPEN COUNTRY. - ACROSS THE SELLE. (From Malcolm Ross.) 20th October, 1918. Certain Octago and Canterbury 'battalions had. been the leaders in the brigade's attack so far. By the Dth October the time had arrived for other battalions to take a part in the hunt. They were to attack at 5.20 a.m. under a creeping barrage. This barrage came down in due course, but it fell in a void. In the nighttime tlie enemy had stolen away. The troops pushed on as fast as the barrage would let them, but no enemy was seen- By the time the first objective was reached the barrage became very ragged, and the left was held | up for some time by it. Later the bar- | rage died down, and the companies went forward across the open as if they were doing an exercise. They pushed over the ridge between Caudry and Fontaine, the former a town of considerable size, iii which there were still civilians, and the latter a smaller village vrtiich was practically joined on to the larger village of Eeauvois, abutting on the Le Cateau-Cambrai road. 4t was on this ground that the battle of Le Gateau had been fought, and our men were making new history on rolling downs over which the tide of battle had ebbed and flowed. Le Cateau itself, where, four days atfer Waterloo, a little over a hundred years ago, Wellington had fixed his headquarters, was only a few miles away But the trend of the New Zealand force was not in that direction. It was towards Fontaine and Beauvois, on the other hand. The leading lines got down the slope facing Fontaine under heavy rille and machine-gun fire, for the enemy were still in Fontaine, and machinegunners wcra firing on our troops from it 3 church steeple. We watched our men digging in in rille pits in the beet fields and on the rising ground just to the right of the village- Some Essex troops were fighting bravely for Caudry, but were not jet in touch with our right.

NIGHT FIGHTING. The commander of ono Otago battalion decided to rush past the villages in the night, and do the mopping up afterwards The men rested in their shelter pits till midnight, when two platoons were sent out as patrols One worked into Fontaine with only slight opposition The other worked over the forward slope The officers of these patrols did really fine work, going steadily forward in the darkness and never losing direction. By five o'clock our men were at Jeune Bois farm beyond the Cambrai road, and well abreast of Beauvois, tlie forward village. There was still no'sign of the troops on the right who had started later, so there our men stopped for the time being. They breakfasted at 7 cm., and an hour later Canterbury troops came up on the left after going through the village. The New Zealanders had rushed the enemy right off his feet, and there were evidence of "the hurry of his retreat, such as half-cooked and half-eaten food in his pots and on his talbles. By 9.30 the Otagos were level with T.a Guisette farm, and an hour later they had pushed down the slopes into the outskirts of Bethencourt. beyond Caudry, which had fallen to the 37th Division 1 . There was a great deal of machine-gun firo *sraing from the direction of Quivey right ahead and from the left of Betheneourt, which latter fire was holding up the Cantertmrys and other British troops. Here the fio;htIng became most interesting The Olago Battalion got up level with the firing line of the Germans, who were facing the Canterburvs, and pushed four Vickers guns down the shallow valley for about a thousand yards. Firing with good effect, they soon had the Boche3 running back in the direction of Vieslev, a village on the right, and,' while the Canterburys and the men from the British Isles came up, a forward section of the New Zealand Field Artillery got its eighteen-pounders on to the retreating enemy at short Tange, utterly- demoralising them. The Bodies ran for their lives, some coming towards our troops, and others trying to get away in the opposite direction. The leading battalion now got leevl with Bethencourt, after which some more Otago? came through them, and for the time being the others went out of the fight.

MOKE OPEN FIGHTING. The other Otago and Canterbury men came on again at this juncture to push through their comrades. They came up to them jußt in advance of the CambraiLe Cuteau road at the time when the men of Britain and the Canterbury a were held up on the left Our men were being subjected to a good deal of machine-gun fire, but decided to push on, and, by advancing their own line, help the people on the left. To do this they had to pass through some Qtagos and spread over the whole Brigade front, so as to take in the quarries on the left, into which the Germans were now flocking to resist the main attack in this quarter. Everything could be seen from the battalion headquarters, where the commanding officer sat out in the open on high ground beside a road. The quarry was not in his sector, but it had to be outflanked to safeguard his further advance One company was sent forward with this object, and as soon as the Germans saw that our men meant business they .ran back again up the hill. Our Lewis gunners and rifle-men got 011 to them promptly, and some of the Germans did n-oft get away quickly enough. The advance was now purely a matter of open warfare The men moved forward in artillery formation across the open, taking advantage of the depressions in the ground and what slightcover the country afforded. The staff were on horseback, and galloped across country to hurried conferences. Officers galloped back with reports of n situation, and galloped forward again with orders The battle went on according to the book—a thing that modern battles rarely do. No time was lost: the troops were moving on all the time The thrill of it seemed to nerve our'men to greater efforts-

ENEMY ARTILLERISTS FOILED After they hsul gone so?nc distance enemy artillery came into action to endeavor to stop the advance. A captain was wounded and there were a few casualties, but once the railway was passed the command managed to dodge > nearly all the shelling. The enemy

thought our troops would come down the valley running with the railwa.y,,and he shelled that ground steadily. Had our men marched that way there would have been heavy casualties, but Htey went aeioas the valley in artillery formation, and so their casualties we're reduced to a minimum. While brie company was outflanking the quarry, ani other company was pushed on to capture the village of Viesley which in due course i-they got, with one 77mm. gun. Opposi tion came from a cemetery to the south which had not been cl« ared owing to the battalion on the riglj; not having yet ,come up A platoo* '«» sent across '.the front of his batta| it quickly dealt with the from the cemetery, wit..- Result thai the troops on the rig' 7i'"e then able to advance. By this Uime the right company was on its final objective, which was a line in front of Vieslev on the crest of a ridge. The battalion* commander, to use his own words, anchored them t.«ere while lie pushed up the quarry outflanking company and "closed the concertina" so as to establish hi* men on his own foattalion front. To show how quick the advance was it is worth mentioning that the objective gained was the objective laid jrtown for the Brigade that had to pass through these troops that night. It was a splendid advance, creditable to all concerned.

TOWARDS THE SELLE. At dusk we pushed on another thousand yards towards the village of Briastre, on the Selle, a small river with a railway and high ground beyond. There were indications that the enemy would make some sort of a stand here. Our troops got to the line of a sunken road on the edge of the village, mainly with a view to protecting the left flank'of the division on our right, which came level with us at 8 o'clock that evening. There these South Islanders dug in till they were relieved later by the North Islanders-

I have dealt with these operations somewhat in detail in order to give an idea of the changed nature of the fighting in which we have recently been engaged, and the quickness and adaptability of our troops in dealing with a changed situation. It remains only to be said that such a situation had 'been foreseen by the Divisional Command, ami that the men, when opportunity offered, received special training in area's further back m order that they might be able to acquit themselves with at, least a fair measure of success. Expectations were perhaps more than justified by result*. The scouting work was particularly good.

One feature of the operations was that the cookers were taken right up into tlii? fighting area, so that the men got hot meals. On the morniDg of the Bth, for instance, when we were to attack at 4.30 a.m., the cookers were taken across the canal, and at 3 o'clock in the morning the men had a hot breakfast—rather an early breakfast it is true, but the truth of the Napoleonic maxim holds today as it did a hundred years agci The men had hot soup and rissoles, and then the eqokera were sent back across the bridge to get them out of the way of possible shelling. The same thing happened on the 10th. The cookers followed the troops right up to the rear of the position at the Cambrai-Le Cateau-road, A MUSICAL PRISONER. There were not many outstanding incidents in such lighting as this, where all our officers and men engaged reached a high standard of general excellence, but an amusing incident that for the moment relieved the tragedy of war may tbe related. At one stage of the advance a drunken Hun of the 402 nd Regiment was found srfiping with uncertain aim at our fellows He was taken prisoner and marched to Headquarters, where lie persisted in singing Hunnish songs to the Battalion Commander The latter booted him off, but he continued liis musical efforts, which were comical in the extreme in such a situation, apparently with a view to impressing the Adjutant. The Adjutant pushed him off to Brigade Headquarters. By the time he had arrived there he had become coherent, and the Intelligence Department got quite a lot of useful information out. of him. "In vino Veritas" applies in war as well as in peace.