BRITISH CAPTURE BEAUCOURT.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 January 1917, Page 4

BRITISH CAPTURE BEAUCOURT.

Advance South of Bapaume. (From W. Beach Thomas.) With the British Armt in' the Field, Nov 15 We stormed to-day by frontal attack the strongest fortress .system on the line. We crossed a system of trenches, twisted into every sort of complication, over a breadth of half a mile aud smothered with the thickest of barbed wire.

We dug tl*e enemy out of caves aboil' as tug as Buckingham Palace aud wheedled him out of common dug* oa s wiii ;h had spacious doorways opening to steep stairways of 20 to 80 steps. One of them was a famous dressing station near St Pierre-Divion, into which for several months our observers have watched the enemy daily carrying his wounded from the more southerly fighting.

The losses are small m comparison with the magnitude of the victory, though the sacrifice is always great when brave men fight. The ranks cf cowed and pallid prisoners that I met coming back from their trenches shouted the news that the better men had won, but the very abjectness of the procession inspired the deeper regret for the price of the saorifioe. The thousands of them did not seem worth the loss of a single platoon of the Scotch and English soldieis who had leapt so gaily over the parapet and were now laughing and singing in the face of their wound?.

Bat in figures the victory was not dearly bought. Among some regiments prisoners greatly exceed Idsses, though the variations in fortune were great. Some soldiers never heard a machine gun and found the shelling light. Others snffered somewhat heavily.

FRINGES OF HANDS, The first wave crossed the first trenches easily; but then the macbire guDg got to work. Succeeding waves were at some points hold up and a few advanced groups thus left isolated and overwhelmed by numbers. South of Baaumont-Hamal Germans poured out from trenebes with hands up and fririges of lifted fingers lined isolated shell-holes. In other strong places and in the villages bomb and bayonet fights raged on equal terms. We have won no victory of such dimensions against greater odds.

“Yoa will never take BeaumontHamel,” said. a foreign critic to me on Jane 30 after 1 h*d been up to the front trenches to watch our artillery fret its trees and etone houses into fragments. He was right as to July. To-day the front trenches ware magu‘ficent!y stormed the crown of ae gnal victory. Tae village is built oat of its own site and the quarries dug for the building compo?e a semieirole of eaverns of enormous proportions with headcover too thick to be damaged even by a “Grandmother” or “L.zy Eliza,” as our mßn named the great 15in. guns which poauded them. 1 stood by the monsters this morning while they lobbed tons of explosive close over the heads of tba very men who bad defended Beauraont-Humel. But they were safe enough. They were walking peacefully as prisoners, hundreds to a group, and the colossus was already roaring against a more distant prey—Puisienx, perhaps, or Grandecourt.

I cannot better describe tha spirit of the attack than by giving a single incident from the heart of the affair, A luety soldier in the eecoud wave was just about to follow up tha regiment already safe in the German fourib line when a little R.A.M.C. man bustled np. “ Have yoa taken Beaumont yet,” he asked, “ because we thought we might use such and sueh a cave aB a dressing-station ? ” At the moment we were only at the edge of the village waiting the moment of assault of this hitherto impregnable fortress. But cur soldiers ware not 'harbouring doubts this momr-g. “ Come back in half au hour and it shall be ready for you,” said the Tommy with obarming insolence. A machine-gun bailee that took him in the arm as he was entering fcbe village had not iu the least depressed his spirits.

CAUGHT IN DUG-OUTS. Our men were actually pitying the Germans for their deep dug-outs, and seemed to regret that these did not permit the poor fellows to get out in time to fight with the bayonet. You could almost, infer the same fact from the mere spectacle of the prisoners. I met a thousand or so of them on their way back to the “cages’’and could

see small sign of battle. Almost all were comparatively clean, and almost all looked curiously white, as if they had seen little sunshine or even daylight. It is, indeed, I believe, liter, ally true that dug-out existence, coupled with the fear of movement by day, has bleached a great part of the German Army. But many of these troops were not of the most lusty sort. They were largely Silesians, old soldiers, but composing one of the newer divisions pierced together out of the superfluity of old divisions. The shoulder straps that I noted down from the groups that passed me denoted the 65th, 62nd, 2nd, 68th, and 23rd Regiments, In parts of the line the enemy were certainly taken by surprise: by the sudden completeness of the barrage and the dash of our troops ; and little fight was left in them. Our men went rather quicker than usual, in spite of the mud. Borne waves burned straight over the first three trenches, which they found pulped into shapelessness by our fire, and even before they reached the fourth a long string of Germans came filing out towards them with hands in air. Certain groups among them exhibited a humorous docility and humane readiness to assist their captors. For example, a Red Cross corporal, armed only with a stick, at once, unasked, drilled a group of nine of his infantry into stretcher bearers and set them to work in the middle of the fight. They did their journey without loss, for happily the enemy’s shelling was not sevete ; and the machine guns at this place were mostly silent.

FOG COMPLICATIONS. The battle began this morning at an hour when it ought to have been light but was dark. An autumn mist, almost a sea fog, swamped tha dead earth. The flashes of the guns were broadened to the bkensss of furnace flares. The most to ward observers could see to mute than a second denser, more turbid fog, wher9 the tawny explosions of our guns broke along the German trenches. When the curtain lifted and fell farther baok nothing definite at all could be seen.

Perhaps the fog carried some compensations with ir, but our infantry felt robbed of the full satisfaction of the battle. “We should have eaten ’em up if we could have seen em properly,” one man said. The fog also complicated an already difficult manoeuvre, for we were attacking both norfch-eaat and due east, aud tha two lines of advance had to be very nicely adjusted and timed. Tactically the -junßt;oa of the foicaa moving at a taDgent south of the Ancre with thos9 moving east to the north of the river, was a triumph of accurate orgauisition.

The day’s fighting, if we maintain our gainß, makes a great change in the map of the battlefield. A workmanlike line now runs from the west of Regina Trench [north-east of Thiepval], which was the southern end of the attack, straight across the marshes and stream of the Anore through Baaumont-Hamel till it is broken—at the moment I write —by Serre, and is continued to our old front line jußt south of Hebuterne, But these are no one-day battles, ever? in the depth of autumnal mud and autumnal roists-

Cjunter-attaoks are as certain as our own further threats against the vilages and strong pjiuts threatened such as Puisienx a pl*B9 of Home size and strength, and Graodecourt, famous for its dag-outs and ones for its howitzer batteries. At this moment battles are raging at Beauoonrt, on the north bank of the Anore, and east of Beau-.mont-Hamel.

How often in the early hours of tbii morning was July Ist suggested, aad how many things learned then brought success to-day ! One would like the troops that fought that apparently vain battle to know and feel how large a share they may claim in to-day’e event. a

NEARLY ALL HOME TROOPS. The dash of the infantry to day, as f ~uc months ago, aroused the admiration of all officers ; and as before, the batMe was almost wholly oonfined to home troops, English county regiments have a largo share in the triumph and are described as fighting with “ almost ludicrous calmness/’ One of the soldiers I spoke with attributed his own dash to the damp and cold. Never in his life did he more want “ something to do.” He had it. Between six and seven this morning he crossed the thorniest half-mile in Europe. He went with spirit; and on his return, sandwiched with mud. wounded in two places, he hobbled home as gay as ever. He had taken his morning exercise and was content.

The artillery, too, was content in spite of the exceeding difficulty of firing without observation. No aeroplanes or “ sausages ” could be used, and artillery observers in trenches were nearly useless. The co-operation with the infantry was excellent nevertheless, except for a few examples of uneven propulsive ammunition and some slight excess of eagerness in the first infantry waves who moved dangerously close to the barrage. Previous bombardments, sometimes as sudden and complete as before the attack, had left little wire uncut and mauled many trenches beyond recog - nition. Guns of the heaviest calibre have never been used in higher concentration. Later.

Some nests and pockets of Germans now being dealt with remain north of the Anore behind our general line, and the enemy is making great efforts to keep control of the higher ground north of Beaumont-Hamel. The fighting quality of his troops iD this quarter is in abrupt contrast with one of his regiments farther south, who were seen from the flank standing in their deep tienches and shooting as rapidly as possible. The struggle over all the northern stretch down to Beaumont-Hamel continues to be desperate, while all later information goaa to prove that successes in the south, especially round St Pierre- DivioD, were amazingly quick and complete. Oce very L .glish battalion of about 600 men took 300 prisoners without suffering casualties up to half that nnmbsr.