DEAD MULE GULLY.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 5, 16 April 1920, Page 13

DEAD MULE GULLY.

THB FLATOGN GOES IN. (Publislied by Arrangement. ) (Copyright.) They had marched from cne sector, reputed ."quiet" in the technical language of the Army (but not without its weekly toll of death, and always with its daily and nightly stress of labour with pick and shovel), and now, after this "rest," they were on their v.ray to anolher sector once more to "hold the line. ' ' They had marched through Ouderdon, through the wreckage of that remnant of Dickebusch which still served as billeis for a labour company and for a unit of Tommy transport, and so they came to that jumping-off place known as "Railway Dugouts." Kailway Dugouts lay (and porsibly still does) amidst all the noisesomeness, the incredible desolation, of what was once Zillebeke, once a setting for a Watteau pastoral, a plesant land-.pf littlp chateanx, of artilicial lakes, of formal gardens and straight-stemmed, decorative trees. But no New Zealand soldiers had seen it so-*— they could not imagine that such things had been, for as they saw the place it was nothing but a wilderness, ruined, dishonoured, spoiled. There was not 6ven brick or stone to mark the place where the gay little chateaux had been ; it seemed they must have been engulfed in that Sargasso of mud which stretched in unrelieved hideousness wherever one lcoked. The trees -\yere shattered stumps, or they stretched splintered arms in mute appeal to Heaven for the heauty of which they were once a part. The lakes and streams" had been blown out of all existenee hy the three years' deluge. of shells which had made the name of this region a word of hcrror to the soldier ; where they had been were spreading areas of plthy shallows, burdened with corruption and sinister with evil, as was all that landscape, scattered with rusty iron ammunition hoxes, hroken .guns, smashed waggons ; pitted with shell craters, littered with _ dead horses and tlie torn equipment of doad men. IN THE DUGOUTS. The dugouts— long corridors of them, fitted with tiers of narrow hunks made of timber and wire-netting — had been dug beneath the high embankment which had once carried express trains across this low country. Many soldiers, of all nationalities, had occupied these dugouts in passing, and they were fetid, rat-riddled, dark, and crawling with vermin, but they

were safety, and therefoTe a place to be . tnankful for. Inside, the men lay on the broken hunks for there was no room to sit , in a gloom that was only emphasised hy the pin-points oi light from a few guttering candle-ends. They had eaten their evening meal of stew and hread, and now, with their valises for pillows, their greatcoats for covering, and their equipment. and rifles beside them, they were only waiting for the darkncss when they would march to Hooge Crater, and then, once more, make their way to those too-famil-iar heights by way of the grim track which was called Dead Mule Qulley. Only hy night, or on days when rain made observation impossible, was it advisable to take troops that way; and even then there wa.s no safety for the enemy's gunneis knew well where Hocge Crater and Dead Mule Gully lay, and on the dark est night or thef dreariest day they would send over an une^ected hurst of shells, knowing that" such times were favourable for the movement of troops. The men, who had been there before, took what rest they- could befcire the hazardous trarnp commenced, and tried not to think of what tlie eoming days held for them, for, as Job has said : "The morning is to them even as the shadow of death. For they know the terrors of fhe shadow o|/cleatii." THE DREARY MARCH. A corporal came groping and stumbling through tho glcom : "No. 3 platoon, get ready." The men crawled from their bunks, carefully pocketing their precious bits of candle, and dragged their gear outside, where, though tlie hour was not much pasfc 5 o'clock,' the grey mist of a Flanders -winter evening was already enshrouding the place, and a dark sky was lowering with presage of rain. They buttoned their grcatcoats, wriggled themselves into their equipment, and took up their hurdens; for some carried shovels, and some picks, and others were weighted with sandbags full of rations. Two by two, in sections of ten, with wida intervals between, the company moved off. Motives of economy, - in men, made it advisable to mareh in file, in little bunches, for if a shell should land upon the road there would be fewer killed and maimed than if the men were marching in the solidity of platoons. Along the cobbled road, its boulderlike blocks upheaved ' by the traffic oi countless transport waggons, or by shellfire, they tramped stolidly and silently througli the gathering dark, now and again passing some fragment of ruin, looming ghostly through the mist, or a broken motor lorry thrust hurriedly from the highway into the stinking ditch. From the cobbled road they branched ori to -a track, part duck-boards, part mnd, wliich led hetween holes, and small, decaying dugouts on the fiat— though occasionally a faint light glowing through a crevice would show that not all the dilapidated caves were untenanted. At last they reachcd that road of plants, built hurriedly in the immediate wake of battle over wreckage and decay, and there they formed once more into groups. Though they strove to preserve the proper intervals, the spaces would keep shortening, despite urgent demands, possed along the line, to y'shorten step in the rear," and vehement questions from sergeants as to what this and that section meant hy crowding up, or the bitter complaint of some- burdened man lagging in the rear : "Go on; douhle. why don't yer? Are y' so dead anxious to get there?" THB SGMBRE ROAD. They were anxious to get there, for even a trench is prelerable to a filthy road which at any moment may be swept by a burst of heavy shells. A halt was called, and the men rested a while besKIe a mound of great howitzer shells, salvaged along with much other useful debris from the quagmire over which the plank road ran like a bridge, but though it was a needed rest, yet the men were impatient to get on, Already the threatefied rain was falling, making the darkness even more eerie with forboding and anxiety; They could not ■see, but "they knew that for miles along, on either side, tlie road was piled with wrecked waggons, tossed aside to clear the way for the living, and marking the places where horses and men had died in the envelopiug mud. They knew that around them lay desolation — splintered trees dottiirg a bogland of shell craters which flowed in icy water one to another as far as eyes could reach, a wilderness in which, half-submerged were the crumpled iron shelters of artillerymen, overturned limbers, and abandoned guns, for they were nearing the gigantic mine-hole of Hooge Crater. Another half an hour of tramping through the slush, over the tilting, squirting planks, and Hooge Crater was reached, and another halt was called before

the next, and wors', stage up Dead Mule Gully. In single file, headed by the captain and a guide, ■ the first section of the first platoon started the ascent of that place of pitfalls, but so slow, so toilsomo was the way in fhe afysolute blackness of that night of rain, that it was long after the first platoon had moved off that the last received the order to move. DEAD MULE GULLY. This was D£ad Mule Gully, a she.llshattered, sodden place, up the gaunt sides of which a tortuous track wound, and \yhere, in the drenched dayliglrt (for it seemed always to rain here) the pitiful relics that had giyen the track its name were only too obvious. They lay, bloated and rigid, in all conceivable attitudes, half-buried in mud or stranded upon some clay-bank, surrounded hy water discoloured with their blood — dozens of mules, still fast in the slime which held them when they had been shot to pieces, sereaming in terror, their heavily-laden panniers dragging them deeper and deepcr into the slough. Even at night the mules made — eir presence apparent, and the track was had enough without their unpleasant reminder o.f mortality. The duck-hoards — what was left of them — were broken, • un certain and covered thickly with greasv mud, on which hob-nalled boots could get no secure footing. The cold rain mirsgb ed with the perspiration which trickled from heneatlY the men's steel helmets as they staggered upwards under their heavj bnrdens, treading tentatively, straining onwards with hard-drawn breathe. Nov; and again a man fell, and had to be helped to his feet, and sometimes a man, stepping not delicately enough, would have tc be dragged by force from the clay into which he had sunk. THE PREOARIOUS TRACK. Hero where there had been duek-boards. was a huge shell-liole, here a single duckboard led precariously over another water, filled crater. Low voices passed the word , from man to man: "Broken duckboard here." "Shell-hole here." "Keep to Ihe left — shell-hole." "Look ' out for wire." So, very slowly, with effort, in a blao| drizzle, through which we could not see. the climb was made, but not without bitter mutterings and revilement, Clo :-• at hand a weary Lewis-gun corporal overhalanced and fell with a splasli into a deep shell-hole, and again the long Jine halted as his mates dragged the shivering man out-; and even then he must plunge in again to rescue his precious weapon from the mud. At last, low voices were heard speaking guardedly out of the darkness m a bread North of England accent. "How many more miles have we goi to go to get to this 'possie' of yours?" asked the exasperated voice of a Digger. "Not fur, choom, not fur — ahout 300 yards after ye pass the old tank on the right, an' coomin up again the pilTbox." A few gas-shells wobhled overhead. making that queer, gohbling sound which identified them, but they burst far to the right, with a "plop!" and the night was too wet for their exhalations to spread far enough to affect any one of tho platoon. TAKING OVER. Tlie intermittent duck-boards gave, place to a sort of track of slippery clay, but it was still upwards, though the lungs were sore^ and rifle and equipment seemed so heavy that one swayed with the weight. . . And then, right by the track, there was the derelict tank, squat- - •ting half-buried in the mud, its snout lifted impotently. to the sky, and ahead, a darker blur upon the darkness, loomed the squat bulk pt the pillbox. The lastplatoon had gained the top, and beyond, in the hollow, there sprouted -the blossoming flares which marked the enemy's trenches. A guide, speaking ihe same thick N orthern dialect-, came forward. Another ttvo hundred yards across a slippery track winding amidst holes, along a paved road, and on which, dimly discerned in the sickly, fading#ight of the fiares, there still sprawled some enemy dead (which no one had found time, or sutiicient reason, to bury), and a trench was reached. There was a challenge and a -password, and the sergeants, relieving and relieved, consulted. The word was given, and the men dropped into the trench, flinging off their burdens with as much alacrity as the Tommies shouldered theirs and scrambled out on to the track They moved off without any delay, and the men who did not immediately have to mount guard, pulled their ground sheets abont their head^nd huddled in groups in the most sheltered corners of a sloppy;, newly-dug trench, there to doze as besfc they could and to await what revelation the dawn would bring of this, their latest home.