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Show OPEN FIGHTING PLEASESTROOPS Australian Soldier Takes Keen Delight in New Land Warfare War-fare in France. BAYONETS FIXED Shells Whiz by Heads at Rate of Three a Minute. Min-ute. AUSTRALIAN HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, April 21. (From a staff correspondent of the Associated Press.) After these many months of trench warfare there is keen delight for the Australian soldier In this new land warfare which the German retirement re-tirement has opened up. The fighting is In open country now, over gently rolling downs of what look like grass land. It Is really most of It wheat or turnip land which has not been cultivated cul-tivated for a year or two. The country coun-try is aB open as the Australian central cen-tral plains. It is qulto a new sort of battlefield for these Australians. They march down to It through valleys almost exactly ex-actly like the valleys in the peaceful parts of France. Thero are whole acres in which one cannot see a single sin-gle shell hole. Back across the green country or down the open roads come men in twos or threes occasionally, sauntering as one might find them on a country road on Sunday. They are tho wounded helping ono another back to the dressing station. The walking wounded have to help each other back In theso modern battles. It Is no longer long-er looked upon as meritorious for an unwounded comrade to assist a wounded wound-ed man to the rear. Nearer the front the country becomes be-comes more feverish. Angly bursts of tawny color aro seen in a haphazard sort of way dotting tho horizon and tho country side. Here and there aro Australians In great coats standing behind be-hind mounds of earth with their rifles pointed over the top, bayonets always fixed. Frequently when thore Is no other shelter there are hastily scooped trenches. A quarter of a mile away another party Is lining a roadside, flat on their stomachs in tho ditch, bayonets bayo-nets peeping over the top. Shells are whizzing by at the rato of two or or three a minute, high oxplosives bursting on contact behind their backs about as far away as the other side of a cottage parlor. Over a bit to tho right Is a sleepy French village. Not a living thing Is to bo seen down these straggling Lag-nlcourt Lag-nlcourt streets. The bricks of tumbled walls He here and there just as tho shells knocked them. Through them, just as In old battlo pictures, may be seen the bodies of dead Germans, at corners, In the angles of tumbled houses, a courtyard visible through a shattered brick wall, two of them In the bottom of one of the big craters which the Germans themselves blew at every crossroads to impede the en emy's advance. Nothing stirs in the whole village and the only sound coming com-ing from this abode of death Is tho occasional fall of a tile or some debris thrown skyward by a shell descending from over behind tho next village. Once in a while one meets a prisoner prison-er being escorted to the rear. There Is something very Impressive about these little processions of two men, prisoner and escort. Tho prisoner, usually us-ually a young German private In neat gray uniform and steel helmet, walks , In front After him, grasping his rifle with both hands across his chest, his weather-beaten brows puckered as he picks his way over the tumbled stones, comes tho living embodiment of tho Australian back country. Nine cases out of ten, somehow, the soldier who escorts a prisoner seems to" be that bit of.puro Australian, either western Australia or Bouth Australia, the War-rego War-rego or the Burdekin. Ho Is an earnest man, Intent on executing ex-ecuting his errand with dispatch and exnctltude. "Can you tell me the way to headquarters?" head-quarters?" he asks as ho passes. Then he disappears slowly up tho street on tho heels of his silent companion. Theso Australians are just as good fighters in this new warfare as .-ey wore at Gallipoll or In tho trenches, perhaps even betcr. They had their first encounter with German cavalry the other day but It "was only a foint at a flank and lasted only a few minutes. min-utes. nn |