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Mitchell recalled that ‘the longer a man served, the fewer letters he got, the more he was forgotten’. Others complained that their letters had been lost or slowed down because of the submarine menace. Some sent letters home threatening not to write again until they received a reply.
    It was a long hard winter, and many soldiers, like Mitchell, waited, knowing that ‘some day there will be warmth, light and laughter—some day—for some of us!’
    MORE WOODEN CROSSES
    As the Australians and New Zealanders drained their trenches, brought in fresh bedding straw and tried to recuperate, reinforcements trickled in to rebuild the decimated battalions to fighting strength for the coming spring.
    The French could tell immediately if a soldier was new or returning after a wound. The new troops all had the same ‘happy, hopeful, young faces.’ Once in France, New Zealand reinforcements were trained in bomb throwing and the ‘spirit of the bayonet’ at the ‘bullring’ at Étaples. The Australians were trained in their brigades. They were then transported to the front in cattle carriages with signs saying ‘40 men or 8 horses’. The journey was slow, and at each stop, troops left the carriages to stretch, buy alcohol or play two-up.
    Closer to the front the mood changed, especially when hospital trains, loaded with the wounded, passed by. When Australian Sergeant Eric Evans, a new reinforcement, arrived at Messines in Belgium, 11 kilometres from Ypres, the sight of the many wooden crosses silenced him and the other new soldiers.
    Once at the front, the reinforcements were split up and sent to different battalions and companies. The old hands— those who’d survived the Somme—did not give them a warm welcome; the new recruits were usually the first to be killed or wounded so no one wanted to befriend them. If they got any advice it was to forget all they had learned. New officers were trusted even less; most knew less about war than the men they were to command.
    ANOTHER NEW YEAR
    As the end of the year drew near, both sides tried to make the best of a bad situation. Despite several brutal raids, few shots were fired and the men were able to move about in the open more freely. But the Allies marked Christmas day by bombarding the German trenches. There was to be no repeat of the informal 1914 truce. As shells tore into the Germans, the Australians and New Zealanders manning the front-line ate a ‘bully beef stew, layered with ice, though sort of warm at the bottom’, with a frozen orange for dessert that needed a bayonet to slice it. The Christmas pudding had to be thawed.
    In February, as the frosts melted, 500 New Zealanders struggled across no-man’s-land on a final raid before moving to Messines. With German SOS flares bursting overhead, the New Zealanders stormed the enemy trench, bayoneting, bombing and shooting in the darkness. As they returned, the German artillery smothered no-man’s-land, killing and wounding many.
    Stretcher-bearers returned to help the wounded, well aware that they made easy targets. But the Germans didn’t fire. Instead, one soldier stood up in his trench with his hands raised to show they were empty. One by one, more Germans stood up, surrounded by their own dead comrades, and raised empty hands. The stretcher-bearers removed all the wounded they could find, then returned to their trench as a shot was fired, declaring the informal truce over.
    KILLED IN ACTION
____________________
    PRIVATE HECTOR MCLEOD
12 October 1917

CHAPTER FIVE

RABBITS IN HOLES, 1916

    SING ME TO SLEEP (extract)

    Sing me to sleep where bombs explode,
And shrapnel shells plough up the road
Over the sandbag helmets you’ll find,
Wounded in front of you, wounded behind
    Far, Far, from France I want to be,
Sights of New Zealand I’d rather see.
Think of me crouching in rain and sleet
Waiting for orders, but not for retreat.

    BY A RETURNED