The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-01-18
FRENCH AND BRITISH
 METHODS DIFFERENT.
Do Not Dispose Troops on Firing Line in Same
 Way

London, January Special )-An officer in an Indian regiment writes as follows:
 We had weird night taking over trench from the French. We started with 10-mile walk, mostly in a driz- gle. and largely through liquid tracts of mud which had nasty way of de- ceiving one by concealing the fact that under a plausible chocolate exterior lay a three-foot deep hole which some shell
 had burrowed out. so that by the time
 we had got to our trenches we were
 hardly fit for anybody's drawing room carpet. It's true we got some small amount of washing in going through the rear communication trenches, as our
 guide lost his way and led us by one
 which. not being in ordinary use, was three parts full of ordinary rain water
 But really. it was the most weird
 relief I've ever taken on. To begin
 with, We were dealing with French ter
 ritorials, whose arrangements are diff
 ferent from ours--I mean they have dif-
 ferent proportions in firing lines sup
 port, and reserve from what we are
 used to; so there was royal jabber
 while everyone tried to explain wherein
 one wished to differ from the other man. Then there were miles of communica- tion trenches, which would make Hemp ton Court maze feel quite silly, and the French who had dug them themselves and lived in them for two months, said they sometimes lost their way--a fact l can well believe, as first my guide lost himself, then half my company lost themselves, and then I-well, 1 won't own that I lost mine--but perhaps may have been slightly uncertain now and then.
 Then the French officers run their companies, apparently, in different way | from what we do. We put complete 1 companies into the firing line, and find | the supports and reserves with other | complete companies. They, on the other l hand, distribute themselves in depth so l each company has certain proportion l in the firing lines. and finds it's own sup l ports and reserves. The French hate stray bullets wandering about over their | heads and evidently dislike intensely the possibility of being bagged unnecessarily. | Yet when il comes to charging with the l bayonet-a much more nervous game they take a tremendous lot of stopping. | And as for their women, they don't seem to care little cuss for the blackest | of Black Marias At where we l o6o' | there was a road running parallel to l our trenches and some 800 yards behind | us on each side of which were farm | houses. The Germans regularly shelled l this line and blew all the houses on the | near side of the road to smithereens and l quite a proportion of those on the far l side also. But do you think this was | going to shift the country women? Not 1 a bit of it. When the roof was gone | from their own houses they just walked l across the road and lived in one Of the | undamaged ones and came back every night and milked the cows; again in the morning, turning them out to graze fol | the day just as if nothing unusual was l going on Rather naturally. they sui 1 fered A certain amount of damage ant the COWS became speedily less end even less but the women actually had to bt cleared out by order before they woult leave