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Chapter XXVII Of How the New Zealanders Commenced to Go Forward

As the summer passed the power of the German Empire slowly waned. Their furious assaults on the Western Front had given them great tactical victories, but nowhere had they quite managed to reach their strategic objectives. They had inflicted enormous losses but they were bleeding at every pore. Their marvellous army was shaken and breathless and scarce able to keep up its rain of hammer blows. The flower of German manhood lay dead on innumerable fields. The raw materials essential for the manufacture of munitions were almost exhausted. Food was scarce and the civilian population had for. a long time been undernourished. Even the front-line troops received only enough to keep body and soul together. The people of the Rhineland were becoming demoralized by the bombing raids of the British Air Force. Russia, broken, conquered, humiliated, aflame with revolution, was stirring the revolutionary elements toward action. Not only did the Bolsheviks fling the secret treaties into the ash barrel of history, but they page 290denounced the government of the Kaiser. Karl Liebknecht, the Communist leader who from the beginning had withstood the war action of Germany, was now a power in the land. From his prison cell his voice reached from one side of the Fatherland to the other. Through all Germany ran the insidious propaganda of the British and of the Russian appealing to the hungry, and the weary, and the discontented. The Germans had fought a great fight, but their allies were breaking one by one and soon they were to be alone—ringed by a world in arms.

On the other hand, the power of the Allies waxed greater. The mood of depression had passed. Guns and munitions and aeroplanes poured in from England and men by thousands from America. With this gigantic reserve piling up, Foch was able to do what he never could otherwise have done—use the British and French armies without fear. Faced by the spectre of defeat, the German war lords thundered on, endeavouring to reach Paris. Their blows were heavy, but there were not lacking signs of weakness and indecision. They endeavoured by rallying all their strength to deal a death blow, but it was arrested in mid-air, and after three months of furious breathless fighting the end came.

From the middle of June old soldiers in the New Zealand Division began to notice the preliminary preparations for a great battle. Heavy guns were brought in by ones and twos. Tanks came up quietly by night and were hidden away in patches of wood. Gradually the sector grew hotter. Shell-fire be-page 291came more intense as the enemy commenced to lose confidence. Raids were more frequent: in front of Hébuterne and about Rossignol Wood some small affair took place almost every day.

Rossignol Wood was the highest point on the German line. It consisted of two rectangular patches which opposed a frontage of about five hundred yards to our line in front of Biez Wood, and a lesser and more irregular flank in the direction of Gommécourt. The wood covered an area of some twenty acres. Within it were very deep dugouts and concrete emplacements. It was the bastion of the German trench system in front of Puisieux-auMont and a jumping-off point from which they could deploy a considerable attack. It was as Jçnger, a brave German who faced us here writes: "One of the countless spots that for a few weeks were the central points of the lives and deaths of thousands of men. … It had not the slightest strategical importance and yet at that time it had a meaning for all Europe as a local symbol of power where many lines of fate intersected and against which were set in motion a strength in men and machinery that would have reclaimed a whole province."—Copse 125. Day by day it was subjected to the most terrific bombardments. One moment it would be seen to be sleeping in the sunshine and the next it was deluged with bursting shell. Columns of black smoke rose slowly in the air, carrying clods of earth and broken branches, smashed equipment and mangled men. The chalk was ploughed many feet deep and clouds of white dust floated in page 292the air. Great trees fell crashing and the torn trunks were splintered by the tearing blasts. At night the dark mass was stabbed with flames, green and yellow and crimson, that tore through the gloom and left behind a terrible blackness.

Day after day and night after night patrols crept forward to explore the mysterious wood and the trench system that guarded it. Are the enemy holding such and such a point? A man goes out in broad daylight. He creeps slowly along a length of shallow trench, reaches a point where he must crawl flat on his stomach and crosses inch by inch with infinite caution. The old trench runs under a big hedge and for a moment he is screened from view. He passes the line of the hedge and sees in front of him a parapet. Running parallel with it, and almost touching it, is an old sap filled with wire that five yards farther on bends back to the enemy line. If the post is manned the sentries will be not more than six feet away. The New Zealander presses gently against the wire, finds that it yields a little and that by squeezing along by the wall he can very slowly work his way toward the bend. Inch by inch! Foot by foot! The sinuous coils have to be handled with an extremity of care because if a single strand rattles there will be an alarm and a shower of bursting bombs from which there could be no possibility of escape. Once there is a little rasp and the scout stops dead and waits for minutes that seem like an hour. No bomb! He goes on and at the bend emerges and sees running straight ahead a broad empty communication trench with page 293other trenches opening off to either side. He creeps on for another six feet and comes to what is obviously a block. No sound comes from beyond it. The post may be empty. Revolver in hand, he rises with extreme care until his eyes are just level with the top. One glimpse shows that the post is fully manned. Rifles are leaning against the trench wall. A sentry is on the alert but fortunately looking to his front. The scout lowers his head and silently goes back, with the certain knowledge now that the slightest sound means death. There is no bang or rattle of the wire loops and he repasses the same dangerous way and so back to make his report.

At night a patrol goes out in front of the wood itself. The four men cross the parapet and move quietly through a gap in their own wire. Helmets and equipment are left behind and they carry rifles with magazines fully charged, with a few spare clips in their pockets and a couple of bombs apiece. Once clear of the wire, they adopt a diamond formation and then with the leader in front go slowly forward toward the dark mysterious line of trees. Every now and again they slide into a shell-hole, listening intently for any sound and then satisfied that all is safe, move forward once again. Halfway across No Man's Land an old trench is found and searched thoroughly in case the enemy should have pushed forward listening posts to occupy it at night. There is no one in it. A wooden cross with a bit of tattered cloth fluttering from it is the next mark and from there the slow, careful, doubled-up walk page 294becomes a crawl. The wood looms nearer, dark and silent. Fifty yards away toward the left a flare hisses up into the night and for a moment everywhere is as bright as day.

But even as the light streaks up the patrol lie flat and motionless, faces to the earth so that there should be no gleam on white flesh. They make no move even when the flare falls hissing among them. Another goes up and another, but there is no movement. They are not detected. After a little longer pause the leader glides forward. Straight ahead, not fifteen yards away, is a mound of white chalk on the edge of a wood. Black stumps and broken branches form a weird background. Dark objects, J just visible, may be men or may be trees. Is it an enemy post? There is but one way to be sure and the patrol work toward it on their stomachs, moving 1 inch by inch, fingers on triggers with the first pressure already taken. The rear man has the pin in ] his first bomb loosened and is ready in the fraction of a second to launch it over the heads of the others. Five yards away from the mound the leader half rises and goes rapidly in, the others following.' It is an empty shell-hole nearly ten feet deep and unmanned. Close beside it is a heap of rails, wire, iron standards and beams of wood, evidently an old engineers' dump. For ten minutes they lie quiet and listen. They have reached the line of the wood and from the flares which rise on the left it is obvious that they are level with, and perhaps in between, the enemy posts. Shall they proceed farther?

Once more the leader goes ahead straight into page 295the dark tangled mass of torn trees. There has been very violent shelling here for in between the stumps are huge craters six and eight feet deep. They penetrate almost to the other side of the wood —not altogether quietly for in the darkness it is impossible to avoid brittle sticks or to help sending loose clods of earth rattling down the slopes of the shell-holes. Finally they turn back from a point some twenty feet from a German pill-box that is to earn for itself a sinister reputation. The dim and silent wood mysterious and full of unknown danger, is left behind and the little party move along its outer edge creeping from shell-hole to shell-hole examining the wire. Twenty or thirty yards away a cough or a muttered word betrays the presence of the enemy.

Suddenly, one of the patrol places his hand on a dry stick. It breaks with a sharp snap. Up goes a flare and almost at the same time two machine-guns rattle out. Fortunately their elevation is eighteen inches too high for the men who have instantly flattened out. They roll quietly into a shell-hole. Fritz has evidently caught a glimpse of their movement and immediately goes mad. All his machineguns along half a mile of front open up with a tremendous rattle and send through belt after belt in stuttering blasts. The bombs bang in his wire and there is a brilliant display of flares. The four who have caused this extravagant display of hate sit secure in their crater and laugh noiselessly. Nothing could have done their work better for them. Sentries in the line itself will be able to take direct page 296and accurate bearings on to the enemy posts and next morning the "Toc Emmas" will be busy. When the Germans have recovered their equilibrium, and all is quiet again, the patrol walk calmly back to Railway Trench and recross the parapet.

At this time American troops were attached temporarily to the New Zealand Division to gain experience of trench warfare. They were Virginians —the grandsons of the men who had fought under Lee and Jackson and indeed one of their captains was a grandson of the great Confederate commander-in-chief. They were very anxious to learn and were not obsessed with any idea of teaching veteran troops how things should be done. They were very likeable folk; and with their quaint sayings, strange manoeuvres, their faculty for getting lost, and their remarkable simplicity, they provided much amusement and made many friends.

And now the pace began to quicken. On 15 July the riflemen rushed Fusiliers and Ford Trenches and bombed down Nameless and Nameless support J taking prisoners and machine-guns. Second Canterbury rushed the north-eastern corner of Rossignol Wood and so gained observation into the very heart | of it. Two days later the enemy blew up their pillbox and withdrew to Moa and Shag. Aucklanders cleared Duck, Swan and Owl. Second Wellington reached the line of Chasseur Hedge. On the 22nd, 1st and 2nd Otago and 1st Auckland attacked again. To clear the way for the Otago attack a sergeant crawled out to the enemy wire and a moment before the barrage was to fall exploded page 297two trench mortar bombs and so opened the way for his bombers. A few minutes later the same man seeing the attack held up by two machine-guns rushed overland and single handed shot the seven men who formed their crews. Four Germans came round the bend and rushed him. He shot all four. The attackers swept in and Slug Street, Moa and Shag trenches fell into their hands. Three days later the Germans counter attacked but were beaten back with loss. Then the rain came and for three days the trenches were running drains. Again the New Zealand attack went forward. Here a bombing party made a couple of yards along the sap. Elsewhere a patrol crept in and found a post deserted. Now and again a company dashed forward under a barrage. Chasseur Hedge was passed, La Louvière Farm taken, Star Wood, Box Wood, Kaiser's Lane were occupied. The enemy were hustled out of Puisieux-au-Mont and Serre and the Crayfish system.