A FIGHT WITH FISTS AND FEET

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2376, 4 February 1915, Page 6

A FIGHT WITH FISTS AND FEET

A brilliant passage in British arms was the taking of a small village called Passchendeels, in Flanders. This village was very strongly held by a German force composed of cavalry and infantry, the hitter being securely fixed in trenches constructed in a very elaborate manner. Houses and cottages commanding important points had been fortified, and machine guns placed in the windows. One of the cottages had been used as a sort of telegraph and telephone exchange, and was fatted up just as if tho enemy intended to stay there for the winter. Howovor the Germans had not reckoned on the accuracy of British fire, which, after a terrific cannonade of 24 hours, silenced the German guns, and they found themselves in the position of having to trust entirely to thoir infantry and machine guns to hold the village. This was tho moment that the British commandant had been waiting for, and the word went round the trenches that an attack in force would bo made on the village after nightfall. Promptly to time the British troops left the trenches, and began to spread themselves over the ground in front of the advanced German works. Silently and slowly they managed to hack alia cut their way through the barbed wire entanglements, a high wind favouring their advance and drowning any noise they made. Just as they were preparing for a rush the word was passed round for every man to lie flat and wait for orders. During a lull in the wind the sound of pick and shovel could plainly be heard at a point not more than 20 yards from the centre of the advancing line. A scout was sent out to crawl up to this place, and see what was happening; he came back with the report that the German engineers had sapped a further 50 yards in front, and that they were all very busily engaged, and apparently in perfect ignorance that the British had left their trenches. "Forward!" wa-s the whispered order, and the British troops managed to get almost into the first of the enemy's workings before they realised what was happening. Then out of the earth, in every direction, popped heads, helmeted and otherwise. British searchlights were then turned on the German position, and a hand to hand fight ensued. Many of the Germans were bayoneted still'holding picks and shovels with which they had been digging thoir new trenches. The fight became ono in which any weapon was used —bayonets, hands, and feet—but finally tho British won the trenches and the village.