"A REAL BATTLE AT LAST"

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2254, 14 September 1914, Page 5

"A REAL BATTLE AT LAST"

NEWSPAPER MAN AT MEAUX London, September 11. The "Daily Mail's" Paris correspondent' desoribes coming upon the: battle at Meaux with astonishing suddenness, as his motor-car surmounted a hill overlooking the little town. "In tho valley before us," ho writes, "were white balloons of smoke from exploding shells, fleecy little coveys of shrapnel bursting in the air, and showers of black earth ripped out of the solid ground. Farm houses and haystacks were flaming, and German aeroplanes cruising, overhead. It was a real battle at last. "Descending to the town, we found 'a pitiable sight—wrecked houses and streets like a city of the dead. It was aft odd experience to enter a house through a gap in the wall caused by a shell. "All around was desolation unspeakable."— "Times" and Sydney '.'Sun" services. DRIVING BACK THE GERMANS A ZOUAVE'S STORY COOLNESS OF THE BRITISH GUNNERS . (Rec. September 13, 5.5 p.m.) London, September 12, morning. 'A French Zouave officer relates thatfor four days previous to September 7 the Zouaves were engaged in clearing tho Germans from all the villages on the left bank of the Ourcq. Unfortunately the heavy English artillery which would have smashed the enemy had not then arrived, • but tho • Zouaves were equal to the preliminary task and were heartened by General Pau's conversion of the enemy' 6 big ammunition convoy: into a fireworks display. The Zouayo, rfHds: "We fought from village to village, hand to hand, and the Moroccans fought like demons with their bayonet, work. Tlie Germans' fired the villages, and the rolling columns of smoke and pillars of fire made a- veritable hell upon earth. Our gunners were shelling the Germans from pillar to post, strewing the ground with dead, and across and among these dead bodies we had to charge. They lay about in heaps of bleeding flesh. The enemy's quickfirers were marvellous and they manoeuvred them cleverly. We hadn't it all our own way. It was almost impossible to stand up against it. We had to retire after every rlish for about 251 metres, then as quick as lightning the Germans got their mitrailleuses across the ground we had yielded and waited our next rush. The Zouaves were steady in spite of' the heavy losbqs The enemy's ftuick-firers were

more 'effective than onrs. Presently the enemy's aeroplane began to drop bombs which guided the German 6hell-fire. We were without water for four days. The troops and horses suffered greatly. "Under cover of darkness the Germans oollected their dead, covered them' with straw and paraffin, and incinerated: the bodies. At mid-day on the 7th, the English artillery came _up and they handled their guns as if they were on the parade ground, and this, though the German . shell-fire was hot, and . the screams of dying horses and men join* ed the shrieks of the shells in the in< fernal uproar. •- ; "Gradually -the' German right l ' was' moiled back exhausted and demor« alised." .