WITH THE NEW ZEALAND DIVISION IN FRANCE.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 27, 17 September 1920, Page 2

WITH THE NEW ZEALAND DIVISION IN FRANCE.

D. V. G. S.

Fhe Guns Bark In Their Last Actlon.

(HEW ZEALAND CHEGNICLES).

Towards the end of ihe Division's rest in the comfortable cuiarters of Beauvois, signs appeared of another stunt and a re-entry in to the fighting area. On October 16th, the artillery came under the jurisdiction of the 42nd British Di-?ision, and that day the uattery commanders reconnoitred in the viciuity of Yiesley, a small village near the River Selle, across which our own infantry had driven the en- | emy in their last victoridus push. The fol- ] lowing days were spent in carting ammuni. tion forward to the new positions on the right o.f Yiesley, and on the 18th each battery sent in half its complement of guns, followed during the next day and night by the remainder. This brought prepartations to the eve of the advance Weather conditions were far from good. The roads were muddy and in bad repair ; it was cold and rain had fallen— not in heavy qu antities. but snfficiently to make things decidedly uneomfortable. At fhis ti'me the 2nd (Army) Brigade, N.Z.F.A., j had rejoined the Division, and were work. I ing in conjnnction with the other two perihanent brigades of the Division. The preparations were completed, despite the harassing work of the .enemy artillery, which, during our period of rest, had had ample opportunity of consolidating in gtrength to the east of Selle. The positions which the batterieg occupied were by no means healthy ; in fact, two batteries of the brigade were ob-tiged to change their location on account of the heavy shelling. Zero hour is 2 p.m., and the silence of the chilly autumn morning is broken by the spontaneous outburst of thousands of guns, barking away in maddening confusion, belching forth their wild tongues of angry flame as the metal physic is poured forth on the enemy's line. Al'ong the whole front descends a liquid curtain of fire, 1 dealing -out death and devastation as the barrage creeps across the face of the land. It is a veritable hell, if ever fhere was. Behind the guns the gunners j themselves toil on. The ground is sodden through recent rains, and the gun wheels in some instances sink almost to the axle. ; The trails dig in deeper and deeper as the j shock and coneussioi of each shell send it down a little further. For some hours the barrage blazes away ; then, in the dawning light, the infantry advance. By this time the enemy has joined in the turmoil. His fire of retaliation comes down, 1 but it is a feeble effort compared to our ■ own tremendous concentration. The day wears on. The infantry have ; gained their objectives, and early m the afternoon news arrives of an impending enemy counter-attack. Shortly affer one o'clock the S.O.S. goes up, and as wave upon wave of German infantry approach from the direction of Briastre, the guns respond to the infantry call, and promptly quell the attack. Again, for the wliile, all is quiet; but the gunner has little respite. Ammunition waggons arrive ; tliey have to be unloaded, shells fused and stacked, in readiness for another barrage to open at 4 o'clock. Punctually to. the minute it drops, and the infantry go over. Once again liell brea-ks out, and in due coarse dies down. Still the day's work is not completed. About 9 p.m. the S.O.S. signals go up, and with wonderful rapidify "the protective barrage descends in front of the infantry upon the attacking Germans. Rain is falling and mud is everywhero. Conditions could scarcely be worse. Eventually the enemy attack dwindles, and quietness and cairn prevail once more. Then the gunner, tired and worn out after hours of the severest physjcal exertion, is able to look round to find a place to gain some sleep during the night. He dare not go far from his gun. Near by he digs a narrow little hole in the ground, sufficient to ?ie in, perhaps with an oilsheet above for covering. It is wet, and the rain has trickled in. That is his bed. Tliat is the price he pays for victory in the field. After the aetivity of the opening day, the next day was on the whole quiet. During the morning new positions were reconhoitred, and the* batteries moved f-or-ward. Here the River Selle was crossed near Briastre, and the guns came into action on the western face of a high ridge extending towards Solesmes. Fritz was sending across a fair arnount of shells, yet that night and the next twenty-four hours were busily occupied in preparations fqr ♦nother stunt in the morning. By this

I time our own infantry had come into the line, and it was they wJio carried on the advance. At 2 a.m. on Oetober 23rd the barrage begaii, and the infantry attack developed with eomplete success, driving Fritz sufficiently forward to enable the guns to be moved up in support straight-away. At noon the batteries were ordered forward, I and moved north-east through a little cluster'of houses called Maron, and on through the village of Verigneul, the guns coming into action beneath the slopes of that cone-shaped hill, on the top of which is a Crucifix at the junctioli of half a dozen roads. On the 24th there was little doing. On the 25th another trek was made, arn advance of about three kilometres, which brought the guns into action behind Beaudignies, a village lying a short distance south-east of Le Quesnoy. The waggonlines moved^forward that day a-s well but it proved to be too close up, so that many anxious times were spent. Frit's artillery seemed to have taken a new lease of life. That night they drenched Beaudignies and its immedia.te surroundings- with such a hurricane of high explosive and gas as had seldom been experienced before, not only gun a-reas, but waggon lines, too. It was as trying a night as any, and the next day tbe waggon-lines were ordered back, returning to positions in the vicinity of the Crucifix near Vertigneul. Even then one of the batteries met with misfortane at Pont a Pierres, tbe bridge crossing the narrow little gulley between Salesches and Escarmain. Fritz had been firing intermittent bursts of shell-fire on this one point. Much of the transport had passed through in safety, when suddenly Fritz opened out again, and caught two teams of the 13th Battery, xnocking out horses and men, a-lthough, luckily, the latter were only wounded. It was a scene of indescribable confusion. On the same day, however, the guns were again moved forward to the other side of Beaudignies, and even forward sections of guns from each battery were thrust up another thousand yards or soi For the next four days affairs were considerably quieter, and on the last day of Octoher the brigade was relieved, pass- , ing out of the line for a fevr days' rest, and the guns withdrawing to the waggonlines which, in the moantime/ had again . moved up behind Beaudignies. But the | rest was brief. On the second day ammuni- : tion was carted forward to the positions recently occupied, a.nd centinued until the night of November 3rd, when the brigade moved into the line once more in readiness for the assault on Le Quesnoy. It was scarcely thought then that this attack on the highly-fortified towa. of Le QuesnTiy, with its defensive walls and ramparts, was to be the last big engagernent of the Division in this war. It was an attack en as grand a scale as any during the war of movement of the last three | months. The artillery strength was as : intense as on any previous occasion, and | it was estimated there was a gun to every I ten yards of the front. Our own infantry | held the posts of honour immediately in front of Le Quesnoy, with the Dinks in 1 the ccntre and the other brigades on either flank. Similarly our artillery, supplemen. ! ted by British brigades, covered them, and played its memorablo part in that | cyclonic storm of metal which ctescended j upon the outskirts and ramparts, but ! which spared the town itself. Bo skilfully managed wa.s the barrage that the town, j; which still contained a large proportion oi .itg inhabitants, was purposely avoided, . and suffered nothing from our sliell-l're. ) What damage was done came from the German artillery which, with char&cterlsiic inconsideration, directed its fire lip.on j the town as soon as it was lost. | THE ATTACK ON LE QUESNOY. j The morning of November 4th wa-s not favourable for the. opening of a big at- | tack. It was wet. underfoot, though no I rain was falling, while a cold wind blew towa-rds the line. At 5. 30 ■'a.m. the barI rage crashed down on the German front ! line, and simultaneously the Diggers adJ vanced to the attack. Few will forget j that barrage. The thousands of hashes ' from the guns Iit np the morning' s darkness. TTie eai'th fairly trembled to the etaccata baxkinga of the lighter field guns, ! -

and the deeper resonant crunjps of the heavies which, together with the sharper rather of hundreds of machine-guns, created a terrific noise and din during the lieight of that intense bombardment. To the gumier, beyond his own small sphere of work, where he is more than fully occupied with the management of his own gun, all ' is more or less oblivion, But to a man who is in a position to witness a barrage, to ' be actually in it, with the guns barking behind and the shells screeching overhead, then it is he marvels greatly at the immensity of the effort and the intense concentration of destructive force. How well our boys manoeuvred round Le Quesnoy, outflankipg it, an operation which is regarded as one of the finest feat^of the campaign, we all know And, as our guns rattled away hour after hour, while the barrage crept around and beyond the town, Fritz retaliated, first with persistent heavies, but gradually with lessening aetivity as the infantry broke thiDugli and over-ran his guns By 10 o'clock in the morning his fire had completely died, and only an occasional toutesuite shell came over. The area round the guns was fairly immune from shellfire — a frequent state of affairs during, a big stunt The infantry had made such fexcellent headway that it was possible to move the batteries forward Le Quesnoy itself, until late in the afternoon, was holding out, and in order to get round east of the place, the gun teams were obliged to make a wide detour to the north, almost up to the village of Ofsinval, and then, skirtirg round in front of Le Quesnoy, 'going through the small village of Villereau^ out. side which the batteries went Into action. Next morning the advance was eontmued, and a barrage from field guns only opened out. The infantry went on, meeting with little resistance. The enemy was falling back. At 9 o'clock the batteries again moved forward, and trekked up as far as the north-eastern edge of the Forest de Mormal into positions of readiness. Subsequent operations tpok the form of purely open warfare. The waggon-lines moved forward with the gftns, the whole "parking up" .together. Three batteries of the brigade remained near Le Carnoy for the night, while the 12th Battery, which had been plaeexl at the disposal of the infantry commander, went ahead with the infantry, and spent the night in the Mormal Forest. That night, also, the Division, less the artillery, was relieved by the 42nd Division, and once again we- came under Imperial command. Two days later, Fritz having again fallen back, a long, dreary trek was made through the Forest de Mormal to Hargnies, a village on the western edge of the forest. We left Le Carnoy late in the afternoon and made the joumey through the forest in an inky darkness. The trek was far from a pleasure trip. The day had heen fairly wet, and the forest roads were in a wretchcd state because of hastily filled mine-craters and shell-holes. Wagons and vehicles were becoming bogged, and there were many vexatious halts and delays on the road. On the night of the 8th the enemy was again reported to be retiring; and later- on in the day the batteries moved up to the neighhourhood of Boussieres. The next day we were relieved and. the artillery passed into reserve; and, as Fritz had again withdrawn in the night, the brigade trekked on into Hautmont, a one-time flourishing industrial town within a few miles of the ' bigger f ortified centre of Maubferge. Here the boys received a rriagnificent reception- from the civilians, who, in their great delight at having been liberated from the German bondage, could not do enough for them. They took the artillery diggers into their hom.es and extended to them such cordial hospitality that their short stay at Hautmont will not be forgotten for many a day. That night no one slept in the open — or, if he did, he need not have done so. Tno'se night 3 the majority of the boys slept between white sheets, and, after the rough ..times and hardships of the last couple of weeks, luxuries of that kind were a blessing indeed. The first evening the r-umour ran round of the approach of the German armistice delegates to the French front, followed, the next day, by another, reporting the abdieation of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, but little credence wa-s plaeed in them. CHANGING TIMES. On November 11th, the memorable day on which the war petered out. the artillery left Hautmont on their way back to rejoin the Division on the Beauvois area. The war, in its dying stages, had receded some twenty kilometres or more irom Hautmont, and, as the batteries were on the point of setting out on the trek, the official news of the signing of the armistice and the cessation of hostilities slowiy filtered through. In some instances the news was received on the march, and,'so good it seemed, that many at first were sceptical, and accepted the announcement with the proverbial frain of ealt. RerV-aiv vrder

diffierent circumstances the Jboys would have celebrated such an event in a manner befitting the occasion, but, while the folk in Blighty were soaring to" ecstatic heights of delight and joy, •the very men who had done their full share in the deeds which brought tlie' armistice about had little opportunity for any outburst of feeling. On the whole, thc^.?vvs was received with absoiute cairn. Few realised perhaps that, at last, the war had come to an end, and that they had fought the last action. In Quivey, in. a quiet little village near Yiesley, where the last series of advances began, may he found the whole of the New Zealand Divisiqnal artillery, bat. teries, D.A.C.'s Trench Mortar units, and all. We arrived here after a two days' trek from Hautmont, stopping overnight at Villereau, near Le Quesnoy, and continuing the journey^next day, Quievy being reached that afternoon For ihe moment all has dropped into m. significance against the news of the proposed move to the Rhine, where the Divi sion,is to form a part of the Army of Occupation The air is full of demobilisation talk aird educational schemes To-day has been "enrolment.day" under the latter proposal, and before long the boys will be back at sehool again. Things are moving apace and now all are beginning to fully realise that we are done with fighting days, that at last. we may turn our though ts towards home and what the return there means. Deep down in every heart is a sincere thankfulness that the war is over. But a soldier', after years of rough living and times of har'dship, has had knocked ont of him much of his former emotional spirit. Inwardly, no doubt, he rejoices ; but outwardly he displays little to betray the fact.