THE ENEMY'S MISERY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 292, 29 August 1918, Page 5

THE ENEMY'S MISERY

HOW THE AIRMEN HELPED TO BREAK HIS SPIRIT WRETCHED GERMANS ON THE BATTLEFIELD Mr. Keith Murdoch, the Sydney "Sun's" special representative with the A.I.F. 'in France, in a dispatch dated August 22, says:—

■' "Why did the Bocho give way so completely? The sights cn this remarkable battlefield answer. Never before liavo we seen from the British front so wide an expanse of enemy territory, and now we kn6w what misery tho Bocho has been living in. There are terrible evidences 0/ fear and distraction. His old trenches are poor things, narrow and ill-cut, 'and not provided with decent dug-outs. < ' They liavo thrico as many shell-holes as ours. He dug small shelves in tho sides, just like we did at Gallipoli, for sleeping holes, but here they look mournful and coffinlike. His dead lie here, with staring eyes, seeming to say: 'We sought protection but did not find it.'

"Treading the good roads which he trod you see liis camouflage alongside made of straw or branches, in the vain endeavour to hide traffic, yet the roadside graves sliow where men fell during their weary martyrdom. One village miles behind the line stands a shattered heap of brick-dust ruins, showing what our artillery did. The Boc'ho all these months must have been avoiding villages like plagues, and only stealing furtively through them when movement along the roads was imperative. r Our bombs and shells have made every German billet a mere twisted sepulchre, from which the stench of corpses and carcasses arises. The Work of the Air Bombers. "All headquarters seem to have been established in open fields. It is true that some of these are sumptuous. They-are neatly windowed little houses, with line wardrobes and mirrors brought from the villages, good systems of elecftric lighting, and baths, but even these bear mute testimony to the enemy's sufferings from our airbombing. It may truly be said that ive forced the Boche at least ten miles behind the front to provide underground shelter for overy man. The steady throbbing of our night bombing squadrons going forwards and backwards across the linos, unloading a cargo and then getting another,"has proceeded nightly for months, and it is ten times the volume of the Boche's bombing,

"It has lmdn a. poor sort of life for the Boche in these districts, and when we fell upon him it was upon a Harassed, over-worked, weary enemy. Moreover-, we had tanks, which now tako

their place as one of the great discoveries of, the war, one happily in which wo got an immonso start upon the Boche. But tho Bocihe had enough defenders to repel us if he had been equal in physique and character. There could not bo moro striking evidenced his inferiority than tho long stretches of thousands of yards, where Boche material, helmets, rifles, clothing, and even divisional sets of papers lie scattered everywhere. But few dead Roches can be seen. It was indeed a precipitate flight, or an abject surrender. Tho prisoners look strong enough, and capable men. Certainly a fair percentage of the fair-haired youths are somewhat raw, but all are sullen, hopeless, and toneless." ,