AFTER MESSINES BATTLE.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 24, 27 August 1920, Page 3

AFTER MESSINES BATTLE.

JULY, 1917. THE EVENING HYMN OF HATE. "Bluey," B. Company's babbler, rearranged the dixies on the charcoal fire, silently watched hy myself and four ration eamers who had crowded into the cookhouse out of the drizzling rain. It was a forlorn-looking edifice, that cookhouse: — a few sheets of battered galvanised iron erected against the hank of a sunkon road in tne shape of a rough square, the roof smothered with a couple of inches of dirt as camouflage; the front open. The sunken road ran in a northernty direction up to Messines Ridge, on the summit of which stood the ruins of a large church. into which the Germans were at intervals lobbing heavy shells, each dull, rumbling explosion erupting a huge column of smoke, brick dust and debris. South the road disappeared into a belt of ragged shell-torn timber, from which came the sharp, angry yap of Australian light field guns. In front and rear of the cookhouse stretched a desolate waste of shell holes half filled with water. "Not much of a place for cover, 'Bluey,' " remarked one of the carriers. "Where do you duck when Fritz starts searching for the guns in the scrub there with his heavy stuff?" "Well," said the cook, with a confiding air, "I've cut a gap through the bank at the side of the cubby into an old G,erman trench, and down' that a bit I've hollowed out.a funk hole." He stirred up his fire and went on, "Youse blokes," indicating the carriers, "will have to wait a while yet for the tucker because I'm shorthanded — had my two offsiders knocked yesterday, and that leaves only four cooks to do all the cooking for the bat-

talion. And no wonder, planting us where every Fritz between Warneton and Ypres can see practically every tot or rum I swipe. In the mornin' Fritz (Oh gentle road. How the donk's dingbats get here and blows half this sunken road all over the blasted countiy and nest morning blows half the country over the blasted road. How the donk's dingboats get here with the limfcers of rations I don't know. Half-past eleven last night, and as dark as a stack o' black cats when they turned up, you'd a thought by the language they used that they'd been all over France and twice round the Italiau front. Seemed to think I was hidin' from them. Poor old babblin' brooks, we're always in trouble. A/I'ommy blew in this mornin' dead beat, mud to his eyeoxows, didn't know where he was goin' ; said he was lookin' for the 166th Howitzer Battery. Fancy howitzers this far up ! Anyhow I give him a drink o' tea, and he told me all about his mother and his sisters and the beer he used to drink and the beer he could drink if he had a few gallons handy. Well, after a while he buzzed off, but he didn't get five yards before I missed a tin of cocoa, one of them four iri the corner." The ration men here swore luridly what they would have done to the dirty dog who'd come at a trick like that. "Anyhow," continued "Bluey," "I after him with the ladle and said, 'eough up or I'll smash your crimson mush in.' He coughed up. I wouldn't care, only them four tins is all I gdt to make hot cocoa for the workin' party at 12 to-night, and they're ihe last of the women's trench comfort funds, too." As the carriers shified their limbs to easier postures they voiced a murmurous benediction. "Ah! the women, my Gawd, we'd fare hard if it wasn't for them." The scrubby-bearded faces, and hardquestioning eyes, eyes bloodshot from heavy fatigue and sleepless, dangerous nights, softened perceptibly as each man's thoughts flashed from that battle-scarred region, across thousands of miles of heaving ocean, to the women in the dear homeland. OUR WOMEN, GOD BLESS TiljiM. "Bluey," whom nothing on earth could keep silent, broke the meditative reverie. . "Yes," he said, "and that Tommy tnis morning' wanted to ram down my neck that the river Nile was in Africa, when any dam fool knows that it's in Egypt." He busied himself depositing the dixies outside the galley, and hoped that half the contents would reach the front line trench. The carriers came out and re-wr.apped the sandbags round the calves of their legs, slung their rifles over their backs, and reckoned that as the new communication trenches had no duckboards they would be lucky to get there at all, even if they jxiissed the evening hymn, "Bluey" and I watched them for a few minutes until the misty rain hid them from view and then re-entered the galley. The cook, true to professional instincts cast a glance round, then gasped and shouted, ' 'Those sons of many fathers 'ave pinc'ned all tha flamin' cocoa. If I ever " "Bluey" got no further, for with an irresistibly plunging w-o-o-s-h, CRASH, a German shell burst a few yards up the

road, and amid the resultant shower of masses of mud and iron fragments "Bluey" beat me to the fuukhole by a bare two inches. The evening hymn of hate had begun.