BOMB BATTLES IN M VAULT

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2897, 9 October 1916, Page 7

BOMB BATTLES IN M VAULT

HUNS COMPLETELY ROUTED Australian-New Zealand. Gable Association. (Rec. October 8, 5.5 p.m.)

London, October 6. ' Mr. Philip Gibbs tells a grim storyrf of the capture of the monastery at! Eaucourt l'Abbaye. He says for three' days and nights there were terrifying; doings in the deep-vaulted crypts and cellars, which the heaviest British, explosives were unable to reach. The. British followed the Germans in the vaults, fought them with bombs whicb.filled the caverns with strange lights.' loosened massive stones and smashed the ancient pillars. Scores of bodies still lie in pools of blood in the depths of ihe vaults. An even stranger, sight was that of two tanks which' crawled over the trenches, crushing the Germans. Early in the British at-, tack they were checked at a double line of trenches in front of the monastery. The tanks enabled the infantry to pass the trenches through theii monastery ruin 6, and dig a new ditch! on the northern side. A storm of rain swamped the ditch, and around and behind was a quagmiro of about va* mile. The food and ammunition-car-riers vrero bogged, and it was impost, sible to get supplies to the little bodyj of men in tie abbey who were dangerously isolated; and their position had become desperate; but the Germans themselves had lost heart. Wet and hungry as our men, they deoided to retreat, and only a : few snipers and machine-gunners. stayed- ' A party of surrenders under an. officer.camo to the abbey, and told the following story : "The latter were German reserves, and . arrived '.with a new supply of bombs. They attacked the Britishers in the abbey. We had tlio disadvantage, owing to an acci-, dental explosion of a dump of bombs, leaving the Britishers with only what thoy carried on their bodies. The dogged fight was continued for two days, amid Lcaxy rainstorms. The Britishers desperately clung to the water-logged holes; the fighters were wet to the skin, covered with mud, ; and utterly wounded. The wounded were in a tragic plight, but their fighting spirit was unquenehed. Throughout, the hottest fighting continued'under ground,.and finally we cleared up' Eaucourt l'Abbaye, a teclmical phraßi which has an ugly significance, and means that there is not a single German in the abbey vaults except the bodies of the dead. If the ghosts of the old monks walked, who once came blinking down with horn lanthorns:'to fefch the abbots' wine, they would see the British soldiers, covered with mud, cleaning their rifles, binding up their wounds, and chattering cheerfully of tho fight that was over."