page 188

Chapter XIX Of How the New Zealanders Came to Le Bizet-Ploegsteert and Hill 63 and Made Ready to Storm Messines

—K. L. Trent in New Zealand at the Front.

The Le Bizet-Ploegsteert sector adjoined the old Houplines one, and as the River Lys was bridged in two places there were not a few who endeavoured to renew acquaintance with "Mademoiselle of Armentières." The new trenches were in shockingly bad order and apparently no work had been done upon them for months. The wire was in shreds, the parapets tumbling down. In many cases there were no proper firesteps, the trenches were not drained, and were blocked with debris. The Germans had evidently established a complete moral ascendancy. The snipers were busy, and it was rumoured that they were even in the habit of coming over at meal times and taking away the dixies of hot food. Work was immediately started on the trenches, and very great improvements made. The plague of snipers was page 189greatly abated and three German raids were flung back with loss.

At the end of March the New Zealanders moved farther to the north and went in at Hill 63 opposite Messines. This hill gently sloping and beautifully wooded was a main buttress of the British line covering as it did the railhead at Steenwerck, the town of Bailleul and the great main road that ran from Armentières to Bailleul and thence to St Omer. Behind it the fields were level for many a mile. The road ran from Canteen Corner on the main highway, to Romarin and Red Lodge on the left of the Hill to Hyde Park Corner and Charing Cross dressing station and so to Ploegsteert Village. From the slopes and from behind and then for nearly a mile Ploegsteert Wood stretched pleasantly away to the right toward the Lys. On the left the ridge dropped for a while and then rose again to a high crest at Neuve Eglise. There were few villages in the back area, and in consequence, when out of the line, the men were for the most part billeted in various hutted camps. Hill 63 itself, however, gave such excellent cover that there were always several battalions lying beneath the crest either in tents or in the Catacombs. This last was a huge dugout tunnelled right into the hill with two main entrances and numbers of transverse passages linking up sufficient excavation to accommodate almost a brigade of infantry. It was a foul place to live in; badly ventilated, badly lighted, in some places damp, and permeated with sufficient German tear gas to be decidedly irritating. Dugouts of this nature, while usually very safe, page 190were not good either for the health or morale of the troops.

Below the farther slopes of the Hill ran the little stream of the Douve. On the farther side a long slope ran up to Messines which crowned the crest. The great church towered over the lesser buildings, a high, conspicuous landmark. The fields below were green and not greatly pitted with fire. In the weeks that were to come the Hill grew into the very consciousness of the New Zealanders. It challenged them, lured them, mocked them. The German trenches stood boldly out as though arrogantly defying all attempts against them. The New Zealand Division was now conscious of its separateness, of its identity as a national group, and in the strength of this feeling was seeking for some great deed to give it expression. At "stand to" the Hill emerged stark and menacing to the watchers in the line. At "stand down" in the evening it faded into darkness, mysterious and unapproachable. As the weeks passed the feeling grew that it would not always be a German hill, but that one day New Zealand bayonets would go up and over it.

Hill 63 was the social centre of the area. A big Y.M.C.A. hut was built amongst the trees on the rear slope, and this was patronized by hundreds of men every day until the German artillery picked it up and riddled it with shrapnel—an utterly heartless proceeding when one considers that it was the only place from which hot coffee could be obtained.

The most popular diversion, however, was the huge "schools" organized by the "two-up kings." page 191This amusement was, however, frowned upon with great severity by the higher command, and periodical edicts were issued for the suppression of gambling. Why such a fuss was made it was hard to know, and it has never been satisfactorily explained. On moral grounds gambling is indefensible and will sap the very foundations of national wellbeing; but the higher command was surely not actuated by moral motives! It may have been that the right to gamble was regarded as being the prerogative of the upper classes, and therefore of officers only. There was something of this perhaps. It may have been a concession to some of the padres who, having yielded all the major ethical positions in giving their sanction to the war, were endeavouring to redress the balance by an insistance on the minor matters of morality. It may even have been the fact that two-up was unknown to the British Army, and therefore viewed in the light of a religio illicita. Whatever the reason, the ban was pronounced and some halfhearted attempts at suppression were actually carried out. They were not very successful.

Actually gambling occupied the men's minds under circumstances where otherwise an opportunity would have been given to that deadly foe of all good discipline, mental depression, to do its deadly work, sapping away at those foundations of faith, hope and courage, without which an army cannot be. Commanding officers occasionally endeavoured, not very whole-heartedly, to point out that gambling caused men to run into debt. The absurdity of this, however, was plain when it was realized that all army gambling page 192was on a purely cash basis, as IOUs under conditions which gave life so precarious a tenure were valueless. If a man lost all he had, the very worst result was that he would have to go short of chips and eggs, beer and cigarettes until next pay day.

From the point of view of military efficiency a much stronger case could have been made against smoking than against gambling, for the heavy smoking that was so frequently indulged in had an exceedingly harmful effect upon the nerves. Yet no man in his sane senses would have issued an order for the abolition of smoking. Both of these "vices" had immense psychological effects which, from the "win-the-war" point of view, were wholly beneficial. There was a certain humour in army methods of inculcating morality, for where they strained at gnats they swallowed immense camels with the most cheerful good humour.

From the time of General Godley's Gallipoli manifesto to the effect "that there was too much swearing and that saluting was conspicuous by its absence," until after the cessation of hostilities, the matter of saluting was continually being brought up. It was widely held in Imperial Army circles that the surest test of discipline was the way in which the rank and file saluted officers. The New Zealanders, in general, did not salute any except their own officers, and were not over-generous even here. Therefore, it was argued, their discipline was poor. But poor discipline should result in poor fighting and scamped work. And here the argument broke down; for the page 193New Zealanders could unquestionably fight, and were probably the best and hardest workers in France.

The truth was, of course, that in a democratic age and in a war different to any other, old ways were changing. The close order fighting of the Napoleonic wars, in which a general surveyed his whole field, and everything depended upon rapid, unquestioning, mechanical obedience, was giving way to methods of fighting in which the initiative and intelligence of the private soldier were becoming more and more factors in the gaining of victory. This tendency alone, to some extent, closed the awful gap that was supposed to exist between commissioned and noncommissioned ranks.

The old assumption, too, was that unless there was superimposed pressure from above working through a hierarchy of officers armed with plenary powers the mass could not hold together. It was the relic of an age of authority in which a landowning aristocracy had moulded a peasantry to their will for their own enrichment and profit. In New Zealand this vicious tradition had been broken for •nearly three-quarters of a century. Leadership was readily recognized as necessary, but it did not carry with it outstanding privileges—especially of a social sort. In New Zealand no man took off his hat to any other man—even if that other were the Prime Minister. It would have been the recognition of a class distinction utterly abhorrent to most colonials.

A salute was felt to be in the same category and was, therefore, most grudgingly given. Officers were necessary and useful; but they were not the authority page 194that held the division together. The cohesive influence was far other and was based upon a common will and a common purpose. If by any chance every officer had been killed on one day, the New Zealanders would on the next have elected others, and in three months been little worse off. The massive common sense of the majority saw to it that all orders were cheerfully and properly carried out, not because they were the orders of authoritative persons, but because within reasonable limits they conformed to the necessities of the position. Any attempt on the part of officers to widen the gap was bitterly resented.

There was a good deal of the healthy Ironside spirit which gave implicit obedience to the LordGeneral on the day of battle, but on the day after laid him open to the rebuke of a trooper who disagreed with him upon a point of exposition of the Word. There was, too, a deal of real arrogance springing largely from the rapid development of national feeling and from the lengthening record of successes in the field. A New Zealand private was, in his own opinion, fully the equal of an English subaltern— therefore, why salute him? He got too much of it from his own men anyway. The average New Zealander might be sufficiently vague about just what he was fighting for, but he was absolutely definite upon the point that the establishment of a military autocracy was not one of his aims.

Time not actually spent in the line was employed in preparing for the coming battle. There was little or page 195no attempt at secrecy. The enemy were to be overwhelmed by a tremendous concentration of guns, aeroplanes, tanks and infantry. There was no subtle strategy. It was a matter of organization and of timetables and of checking of supplies. Heavy railways were brought closer to Hill 63, and from there light lines were run in all directions as close as possible to the front line. The main roads were heavily metalled. Tracks were improved and duckboarded. Everywhere were guns, guns, guns. Away in the rear were the long-barrelled naval guns. Across the level were scattered 15-inch, 12-inch, 9.2-inch howitzers, concealed under camouflage netting, in clumps of trees, in deserted farmyards. Behind Hill 63 were scores of the terrible 6-inch howitzers— perhaps the most destructive gun of the war, and ahead of them again, over the crest and in Ploegsteert Wood, rows and rows of 4.5 howitzers and 18-pounder guns. Of the latter there seemed to be no count. They stood wheel to wheel in what seemed an endless line. In the gunpits themselves were piles of shells; at a little distance back were other piles; farther back still, but where they could be rapidly loaded on the light railway trucks, were fresh piles. Guns and ammunition enough to have blown Chunuk Bair to fragments or to have eaten up the slope from Krithia to the crest of Achi Baba. And so that on the day of battle all these iron throats should spew destruction upon the enemy, not blindly, but with terrible, clear vision, miles and miles of telephone cable were buried six and eight feet deep right up to the front line. A great page 196mass of infantry were to be loosed at zero hour against the German Hill, and so new assembly trenches were dug everywhere, some out in No Man's Land, some behind the front line, in order that the assaulting troops should have as short a distance to go as possible between their jumping off points and their final objectives.

These tasks were mainly carried out by the infantry at night. Falling in at De Seule in light order —rifles and bandoliers—the men as soon as it was dark marched the six kilometres up to Red Lodge; picked up shovels, crossed the crest and were then delivered over to the engineers. Each man was given a couple of yards to dig down to the required depth. No time was wasted and the earth was soon flying. The hillside was bare and the moonlight was bright. "Zirr——crash! Zirr—— crash!" A couple of shells bracket the digging. There is a pause—again comes the rush and crash and the whine of flying fragments. All the diggers are flattened out now, hugging the earth close. A few more bursts and the guns switch off on to another target. A man with a "buckshee" in his foot limps off with a stretcher-bearer. Another curses softly to find that the last shell has filled up the four feet that he has dug after an hour's hard toil. Another hour's digging and the job is done. The shovels are dropped at the dump and the party marches back to De Seule and so to bed at perhaps 3 a.m.

The next few nights they spend wiring their new trench, and after that are put on to the construc-page 197tion of another out beyond the front line. A line of posts go out thirty yards past the taped line and lie in the grass watching for enemy patrols. The remainder fall to silently and not without urgency. The enemy trench shows up hard and clear. Surely his sentries must see the line of busy toilers. If he does, what will it be—a sudden salvo of shell fire or a rattle of machine-gun fire? "Pit-pot! Whish!" A rifle bullet whizzes between two men. Nothing more comes from that direction. Another drones overhead while another smashes a spade handle. They are, however, just chance shots. The diggers are down a foot now and there is another six inches of parapet. "Rat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat-tat!" A couple of wicked bursts sweep viciously overhead. "Fut-fut-fut-fut." The earth flies in the faces of a section. Maybe it's just a chance burst! They dig with increased vigour. They are two feet down now and a foot above but there is a long way to go before they have their heads under. "Rat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat-tat! Rrrr-tat-tat-tat!" They are down now, crouched behind the bank. The gun ceases its traversing and the digging goes on with astonishing vigour. The depth is reached and the men file silently in. Just before they are under cover a stray shot fired by some German sentry out into the darkness crashes through a man's brain. The rest with the exception of a stretcher squad file away through the communication sap, are jammed twenty and thirty at a time into motor lorries, and jolted back to the huts.

During May the New Zealand brigades went page 198back one by one to the army training area round about St Omer to rehearse in detail their respective parts in the coming battle. The weather was warm and fine and billets were pleasant. Training was interesting. After the dusty march back in the afternoon sunshine there was the delight of a plunge into the cool waters of the little river that ran so conveniently past the billets. Hundreds of men could be seen splashing and swimming and playing about in full view of the civilian population. Under abnormal conditions the most absolute conventions drop off under the pressure of necessity. Tired, dusty men and a smooth flowing pleasant river!

"Que voulez-vous?" says madame. "C'est la guerre" And the same thing would be said in New Zealand under the same conditions.

Occasionally, men were able to get into the old world town of St Omer, where the main evidences of war were the extraordinary number of officers who were billeted there, the huge aerodrome that lay just outside, and the hundreds of spare Germans kindly lent by the Kaiser's army for road repairs and work of a kindred nature. Being well outside the danger zone the life of the town was much more normal than that of Armentières, Estaires, Bailleul —or even Hazebrouck. Walking past the ruins of the old Abbey of St Berthin, in which Hereward probably attended church parade, they went up the hill past proper French shops and so to the great church and the old-fashioned market. In a big square there were placed rows and rows of tables— sometimes with overhead cover. Here on market page 199days came the madames and mademoiselles from the farms for miles round, bringing their butter, eggs, vegetables, fowls and fruit. These were all spread out on the tables, and then the housewives of the town came out to buy their supplies, haggling and chaffering and bargaining over the sous and half-sous.

The pleasant days of training passed all too quickly and the battalions made ready for the long tramp back to the battle sector. The Australians had been fighting on the Somme. They had taken Bapaume and their patrols had pushed on to the Hindenburg Line. At Arras the storm had burst and the Canadians had crossed Vimy Ridge. It was time for New Zealand to pass "onward" again.