BATTLE INCIDENTS ON THE SOMME

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2829, 21 July 1916, Page 5

BATTLE INCIDENTS ON THE SOMME

HOW BIACHES WAS RETAKEN LUCKY FRENCH RUSE Australian-Heir Zealand Cable Association. Paris, July 19. A lucky French ruse captured Biachcs. The fortifications Averc so well concealed end protected that tlie bombardment failed- to destroy the works. A. German company held out for twenty-four hours. 'L'hon a sub-lieutenant ami eipflit men found a vulnerable spot, and entered tlio fort unseen. The officer and a man rushed forward, throwing grenades, and shouting "Charge with bayonets," and 113 Germans came out of shelter without resisting. ; Six other Frenchmen sprang forward with great fury, and utterly deceived the enemy who flung down their arms, and Biachcs Fort was captured without the loss of a Frenchman, A GRISLY SACRILEGE London, July 19. Mr. Warner Allen, the representative of tha British Press with the French, at the Homme, describes a sacrilege by the Germans ill making fortresses at the Curlu graveyards. They .emptied graves and vaults, and used them as dug-outs, destroyed and flung out the coffins and corpses, uprooted, headstones and railiugs for barricades, and linked up tlio wholo with subterranean passages. The system formed elaborate defence works, full of concealed shelters for ma-chine-guns, wliero tlio Germans, driven from tlio village,' finally toot refuge, compolliDff tlio French to concentrate their artillery, laying the church in ruins, boforo being conquered.