Hands Up

Hokitika Guardian, 12 April 1917, Page 1

Hands Up

The New Inventions

(Australia <fe N.Z. Cable Association)

LONDON, April 10.

Hundreds of Germans were hiding in the deep tunnels pierced through tile hill.

As the Canadians surged up with bayonets the Germans screamed, running, forward with their hands up. Their chief desire was to escape the barrage of their own guns, which were falling fiercely in the trenches though too late to damage our men, who were already bovond there. The German prisoners were glad to pay for the gift of their life, by carrying back the Canadian woundeds. The Canadian escorts had to guard such enormous numbers of men that the prisoners themselves directed the later comers to the barbed wire enclosures. The officers were bad tempered, because their men halted and left then in tho front trenches. The officers admitted the horrors of the bombardment. Some were foodless for four days because they -were boxed in by our barrage. An extraordinary feature of the fighting was the use of a variety of new inventions including tanks of a new moaci which are considerably faster than the old ones and move in battalions in-

stead of singly. The brilliant sucscju on the opening day of the offensive astonishes all experts but we made a mistake in regards to it being easily won. We had the most valuable superiority of heavy guns.

Those new shells are more devastating than the Ormans expected, hut much of the success was due to the heroic Canadians. Experts pronounce the capture of the Vimy ridge as the greatest British victory so far recorded.