THE CRUCIFIX.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 31, 15 October 1920, Page 13

THE CRUCIFIX.

(By Lieutenant C. Ment, in

"Forethonghts. " You are under orders to move up into the front line, and your route lies by way of Dead Mule Gully and the Crucifix — let me describe your path : A winding track made of odd duck-walks scattered about the shell-holes leads off from the plajik-road lined with wrecked waggons, and, crossing a spur, gives you a glimpse of the "gully." About half a mile long and two hundred yards wide, it is but little different from the many valieys which slope gently to the Flanders plain, except that its sides are steeper and it runs parallel to the fronts of the two armies, affording on account of these two characteristicg protection from ground observation to the force in occupation. Before the war it was a pretty and peaceful glade, green fields lined with tall trees and trimmed hedges and witlj a few cottages, brightly colour ed with red tile roofs and whitened walls, cosily nestling in a group of orchards on the sunnier sloge. A winding road wandered dqwn the valley bottom, lined by stragglirig yews and elms. and climbed the southem spur on it3 way to the city near hy. After the German advance in 1914, their line was pushed forward two or three miles beyond the valley, and its position and contours strongly appealed as a position for his artillery. For three years his guns flashed out death and destruction from the vale, for the same period our retaliation searched the valley in quest of revenge, and now the place is ours. But what a change! A reeking wilderness of shell-craters, brimful with the winter rains— trees felled, splintered and buried— cottages to be located only by odd bricks churned to the surface by the never-ceasing shells, and placed oddly on the low ground, several German "pillboxes, massively built in steel concrete, but shattered and wrecked by fire. After the capture of the gully, a plank road was built leading up to its head, but, beyond giving the place its sug.gestive name the track merely provided a new morsei, in the shape of Iog planks; for mastication by the explosives hurled over. The track to the line crosses the gully, and a feeling of depression occasioned by the appearance of the ground gives place to sickened horror as the traveller flounders along the track. The valley has seen some of the bitterest and bloodiest battles of the war, not so much on accountof its own powers of resistance, but because, on the ridge forming its head, there lies a wood which is world-famed as a battle-ground and for the ownership ot which the two armies struggled for rnonths. For the army not in possession of the ridge the gully was a dbath-trap, and a number of units which have discovered this is e\ idenced in ghastly fashion by the shells, with their sickening alternation of dismterment and reinterment. The fragments of German artillery equipment, mangled and partly nuried round the concrete slabs, prove his former activities here, and as for our part, no oue has attempted the suicida-1 project of establishing guns in tliat region of death, but along. the whispy trail of splintered logs which marks where the plank road was built, there lies a sinster trail of earcases, which named Dead Bule Gully. No one lingers in this region, for day and night the shells corne shrieking over the ridge and plough the foulj stinking ooze, while the infantry reliefs scramble and flounder in haste to pass the hateful area. Casualties in Dead Mule Gully are a niglitmare to those in command, for the carry. ing out of dead and wounded is a colossal undert-aking, and delay in these regions means greater loss to a party, whilst Irom the point of view of the sufferer, a wound ordinarily slight becomes in these surroundings a matter of great concern, toi' the soil is reeking foulness itself — teeming with the life which comes of deatn. Passing through the- gully and ascending the other ridge we see the Crucifix, and though the surroundings are not such as would encourage reflection, there are few who pass the cross without giving a thought to its weird persistency. The area surrounding it is, perhaps, the most heavily shelled in the sector ; hardly an hour passes by night or by day but the drifting cloud of a shell-burst hangs around it ; the ground for miles around is torn and threshed, yet the f,ew square ,yards of ground which contain the crucifix are untouched. It is riddled through and through with bullets, shrapnel, and splinters ; it has had poisonous gas fumes around it a thousand times, shells have been shaking the country for years, but the black timbered cross is erect and square and is looking down on the gully this day. To the incoming rellef it ap -/ pears as a solemn and warning guide; to the carry party on the tracks adjoining, it stands as a symbol of death and eternity, and to the outward-bound troops it

it seems sadly to bid them good-bye. There are no New Zealand traditions up in that sector, the names in that locality have not been immortalised as those villages and places which have seen the Maorilander in attack, but in spite of this there are no scenes more indelibly printed on his memory — no names more fixed in his brain than the crucifix and . Dead Mule Gully. »