TERRIBLE ARTILLERY FIRE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2440, 20 April 1915, Page 5

TERRIBLE ARTILLERY FIRE

ANOTHER PICTURE OF NEUVE CHAPELLE (Reo. April 19, 7 p.m.) London, April 18. Details of the Neuve Chapelle fight emphasise the terrible character of the British artillery fire. The ground quaked as if smitten- by a Titan's hammer. Dense smoke hung over, the German trenches and sickening lyddite fumes were wafted back over the British tronches. The Germans were totally oblivious of the British intention to attack. Bodies of the enemy! were blown into fragments, the upper half of a German officer's body was blown .into one of our trenches. Germans found alive nearer the trenches were half demented; they were surrounded by a welter of dead and dying. Two German officers gallantly worked a machine-gun until bayoneted. Neuve Chapelle looked ,as if it had been struck by an earthquake. The streets were thrown out of alignment, and the scene was one of litter chaos.' "Our shells ploughed up a cemetery, and broken coffins and long-buried remains were scattered about the surface. The bodies of slaughtered Germans were'lying athwart -the tombs at points where the entanglements held up our advance. "The German machine-guns dealt out devastation, and the first lines of the Charwalis were withered by a fearful blast .of fire on their left. 'The second battalion of the Leicesters got through, using hand grenades, and swept along German trenches and effected a junction with the marooned Gharwalis, whose first line officers were nearly all killed. "The Scottish .Rifles lived up to their liucknow and Spion Kop traditions, and fought with desperate valour. The.v lost all their officers but one. He and 150 men were all that answered the battalion's roll-call." . The Middlesex Regiment suffered terribly; in the entanglements. From the starting point they left a deep lane of dead and dying 120 yards long. Throe times thej tried to burst"' through Their hands were cut and torn by tha barbed wire, and eventually they had to lie down among the dead 1 until the artillery cleared away the. entanglements. Worcester;; had a fine scrap in ail orchard. With their bayonets th©,y" charged the Germans up and down 'the muddy field, like terriers after rats.' ■ The Germans' counter-attack was a ghastly business—ill-timed and ill-pre-pared. The Bavarians advanced in column against the Worcesters, and twenty-one machine-guns opened, fire. The column advanced, shouting one moment; the next the men lav writhing m a convulsed pile of bodies, the wounded seeking cover behind the rawparts formed by the dead.