VIVID BATTLE STORY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2906, 19 October 1916, Page 5

VIVID BATTLE STORY

THE BRITISH ASSAET ON THIEPVAL AN APPALLING BLAST OF ARTILLERY

fWa reprint to-day one of the finest descriptive accounts of the fighting in the great _ Allied offensive on the Somme which we have yet seen. It is the London "Times" special correspondent's story of tho Battle of Thiepval, in August last."] It was my good fortune to be present at tho fighting below Thiepval and to see it under the most advantageous conditions possible. It was . quite the most Wonderful spectacle that I have seen in this war—a x thing to which no description can do justice and thrilling beyond anything in my experience. Bombardments there have been over «v much larger front end attacks on a. far grander scale. Nothing, however, has been more intense ; nor baa it been possible to seo former -battles from So olose at land. ■Well hidden ourselves from the enemy's view, we lay in holes, and near us .was a narrow spur, of ragged trees which was onco a wood. Immediately on the further edra of these remnants of trees ran our first line trench, from which .our attack was to be delivered, and, from 300 to 400 yards beyond, running directly across our line cf vision on the opposing slope, were tho German linos along tne lower side of the salient; the front line, against M'hich the first assault must fling it-' self, another line beyond, and, in between, , the dimly marked wavering courses of communication trencheß. It was ®11 as plain as if you looked out on your own grounds. In the sunlight of a perfect summer evening cach detail of the ragged trees and the bare slope boyond, brown, with jagged yellowish lines and all pitted with 6hell craters, and hero and there patches nnd belte of green where some siokly grass still grow, was beautifully distinct. ' Straight ahead of us, beyond the top of the slope, anotbor fringe of blasted tree trunks, with a few shattered branches, showed where Thiepval \ay out of Bight. The attack had been fixed for a time near 6 o'clock, and,\ starting early in the afternoon, we were ensconced in pur hiding places well before that time, po that we had leisure.to familiarise burselves with every detail of the field of battle. A young officer crouched by mv side who knew the country like a map of his own drawing. I'rom a battery some miles (behind lis our guns were dropping great 9.2 shells methodically into the. enemy's trenches just in front. Afiout one shot in three fell full in the front-line trenoL Half of the rest hit fairly tho communication trench which ran back from it. It was pretty shooting, closer on its target from three miles away than the average man wonld get with a cricket bail from 30 yards. Other guns of various sizes spoke at intervals, great spurts of sand and smoke, brown and grey-black intermingled, flinging up into the air now here, now there, from all over the slope in front of us, with sudden explosions of white Bhrapnel smoke in the air suddenly blotting out a bit of the view. Nearer, even, to right and le.ft behind us, was tho occasional cr-r-r-rump of the enemy's big shells as they burst. But all this was no more than what happens all the time along all this front, by night and day. It was "quiet," with no bint of anything extraordinary about to ha-ppon.

Artillery Tornado Bursts. The young officer and I had found that our families were acquainted, and, in the intervals, we' talked of things at home —of Cheltenham and crick3t and India and 'Westminster School— always with our minds half occupied vrith thoughts of the passing minutes, when Suddenly ; even as we looked at our watches, it began. 1 have said already that no description can do justice to it. One could hardly set one's self to describe the end .of the world. In the course of my life 1 have seen - many gigantic things, like typhoons and prairie fireß and forest fires and/most of the great volcanoes of the world, and. some battles, and the fall of Antwerp. But meroly as,a spectacle } for the 6plendour and the power of it, I doubt, if anything ever resembled what went on then for the next 20 minutes. The young officer, beside me sat muttering, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" I'or me, 1 wished to shriek, to bite my fingers,, to do I knew not what. And all 'one could do was to drum one's heels on the ground and gasp. • How many guns we had at work' I do riot know, and oould not tell if I knew. ... Hundreds—thousands^—millions—l do not know. But they began all at once, breaking suddenly on the Sunlit, silence. In-. 10 seconds hundreds- : of shells had plunged upon that one'devoted spot of earth. In 2D seconds it semed that there roust have beeu thousands. Hurricanes, whirlwinds, thunderstorms, and gigantic conflagrations; bring them all together and concentrate them on all in a ring of a few acres, and you will have only a suggestion of what went on immediately before our eyes ; One almost sobbed, from sheer exaltation; for the. over-mastering sensation was astonishment at the power of it—at the power of British artillery and the splendour of its accuracy. I do not* t.bmlr one shell dropped three yards on this side of the German trenches, and I do not think there was one stretch of 10 square yards on and beyond the trenches; over all the area attacked, on which a dozen shells did not fall mas many seconds. Of course it was a small area. We could concentrate here on less than 1000 yards the guns which ordinarily have charge of miles of enemy front. So terrific was it that, above all the .roar of the explosions, the sound of the shells passing overhead filled the ears' with a shrieking louder than any wind. As ' for the ground where the shells fell,, it simply waß not. Rent and torn in every direction, it heaved itself into the air, >iot in spurts or bursts, but universally in one great duststorm. There was no ground, no trench, no brown earth or .green; nothing but chaos, swirling and Incredible, until the smoke grew and blotted even chaos out.

Infantry Springs to Action. Then our front trench sprang to life. Pouring over tho parapets, and scrambling as best they could across the uneven, ehell-pitted expanse of No Man's Laud, the khaki figures streamed, not in disorder, but fairly evenly spaced, thin wave behind thin wave. No veterans (but these men are veterans now) could possibly have been steadier and more eager than these troops. From the right-hand end of . the trench the men leaped and headed straight across the open, gently rising ground. On the left, just beyond the ragged trees where the width of No Man's Land was greater, there was a narrow strip of dead ground, low and sheltered from view from the enemy's lines, but beyoii'} this our men must be dreadfully conspicuous, not only from straight ahead, but from all sides. We saw She khaki figures go over that belt of dead ground and out to whore it seemed that it must be certain doath. No Mian can run very fast with his rills and equipment, and the bombs and other impedimenta which ,he sorries, oven on level ground. JSut when the ground is seamed and fi©rred with < shell holes, the difficulty s5 progress is multipjiod. So it alaeems ihafc our men ga forward

slowly, and only by a miracle, it appeared, could those dotted figures, going so brazenly in the sunshine, ever hope to. win across. But the miracle came, to pass. One man only I saw suddenly straighten himself out and then pitch full length on his right Bide. The others never checked or wavered, but went straight on, while the single figure lay there and tossed its anus. Alone all the rest of tho line of tho attack I saw not another man fall. Others must have fallen, because almost immediately Red Cross parties were at work, and when one had time to look closely one saw that there were other figures, which did not even toss their arm 6, dotting the open slope. But the losses were almost incredibly small, as if the men had indeed been, miraculously shielded. The fact waß that along tho seotion of the enemy trenches, under the whirlwind of our fire, it was impossible for any man to oppose us. It was ijnfiossible for any man above ground to ive.' And from elsewhere the dreadful bank of smoke and heaving earth shut out all. vision, leaving it clear only on our side. We. indeed, could see each detail, and with never a hesitation, each man striving only to get most directly to his objective 3 the irregular snaky line went on. On the left, in the centre, and on, the right the men, already in the margin of the smoke, reached the enemy's trenches, and—scrambling, jumping, climbing— they were on the' parapets. There, in the haze, they loomed up heroically. You could see an officer directing his men with outstretched arm (just as they do it in pictures), and the others —in their steel holmets curiously suggestive of firemen clambering among tho fumes of a burning building—running along the trenches edge or dropping down and disappearing. Enemy Surrenders. From the left, as our men came up, \ other figures came out of the trench — one, two, three—and they set themselves to run diagonally away across the open ground .beyond. We saw some of our men bring their rifles up and i fire, but in the density of tho smoko beyond it was impossible to see what j happened. Hardly had the first of our men jumped into the trench when othor of the enemy began to appear. They did not run away, however, these; but thov came towards us, and each had both hands high above his head._ They oame running, and, as they did so, lifting their ieot high to avoid the unoveoiness of tho ground and bits of wire and' things, they seemed to skip ridiculously. The first bunch to issue came from towards tho left of tho attack, and there were something over 20 in the party. Then, from further along, came a smaller party of seven or eight. Then further, again, another party of about a score Ihen .stragglers in twos and threes; and; they all camo down towards us holdings their hands up high and skipping and making all-speed they could, only intent on getting away from that hideous trench as fast as might bo. All these things happened while the noise went on without abatement- cr Every gun that we had was still at work; but from the front German trench they had lifted to the trench beyond, - and from thai they pushed on again to the support lines in the rear. As they lifted, our men also swept on. One saw them go on, over the parados of the first line and out boyond, but thoro the ha?e swallowed them up as it had swallowed the first fleeing Germans.All this is only a stammering attenipt to describe tho indescribable. Even if the noise and the horror and the glory of it did not rob one of half one's senses, its mere magnitude as a spectacle was bojond the roach of .words. And, what is most important, it was, as a military operation, immensely successful. The German Losses. In the whole'afcfcack, as wo now know, we lost, including the lightest casualties, less than 100 men. vVe took twice that number of prisoners alone, and more than twice the number of German dead- were in the trenches. The enemy's l losses, then, in killed and prisoners alono were about five timea our total casualties, including oven the lightest-flesh wound. If their wounded were no more than equal to their killed and missing—a most improbable thing —their losses were ten times as big as ours. Nor does this make any allowance for what may have been done — and it must have been much—by our artillery fire when it lifted to beyond the trenches which we took. Laior, moreover, the enemy were seen massing for a counter-attack, and they were broken up and scattered by our guns.it can only, have been the utterness of the defeat and the demoralisation which followed which has prevented the enemy, up till now, from making any semblance of an attempt to regain the ground we won. It is important ground; and wo have been in possession now for -34 hours.

■ One explanation of the heavy German losses is contained in the fact that we seem to have caught them while a relief was going on, as we learn from the prisoners. There would, therefore, lie double the usual number of men in the trenches, the new men having just come in and the others not vet got out. And, if so, it was hard on those who had only been there afew minutes. Some of the prisoners taken were troops which had recently been at Verdun, and they declare that the worst at Verdun was heaven compared to the Somme. We have heard the same thing before, and I believe that, from the German point of view, it is true. From the beginning of this battle the Germans have been subjected to_ the hammering of an artillery definitely superior to their own. The openness of the country and its exposure combine with the smallness of the theatre to make the effect of that artillery terrific.'- ' I doubt whether at Verdun, or anywhere else, on this front or any other front, has such a concentration of guns been brought to bear on such an area as in this affair last night. It was a full and excellent reply to the German statement that the British offensive is dead.