TALE OR SLAUGHTER.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 April 1917, Page 1

TALE OR SLAUGHTER.

Prussian Guard Debacle (Australian & N.Z. Cable Aseooiation aod Renter.) LONDON, April 16. -Mr. Phillip Gibbs gives further vivid details of the Australian successes at Lag.nicourt. ■‘lt was”...ho says*, “one of the bloodiest episodes in a long tale of slaughter. The enemy before day-break heavily attacked in a mass and achieved a success against the Australians*. Charging in a wave the Prussian guards drove a. deep wedge into our position. The Australian Staff Officers swiftly prepared a counter-blow and at 7.30 o’clock companies of Australians* with an irresistible spirit swept forward forcing the Prussians to retreat obliquely, panic stricken, under a shower of shrapnel resulting', in the greatest disaster, because they were cut off by their own broad belts of entanglements. “The most appalling slaughter followed, corpses being piled upon corpses in long lines in the tangled ma’ss of spiked Vjfre. “The cries of the wounded in long tragic wails rose high above the roar of the rifle lire and bursting shrapnel. “Tho Australians quiet and grim shot continuously until over fifteen hundred German corpses lay before the positions. A dire fate lias followed tho Prussian Guard throughout the war but this massacre was the worst episode in their history. It will be for ever remembered in Germany as a black and fearful thing.

v Another Report Describing (the counter attack at Lagnieourt the correspondent says: “The Germans were caught in their own wire, which had not been cut in the direction they were forced back. “While they ran wildly up and down trying to find a passage, our men were firing with deliberate aim, and shot them down in hundreds. “The intensity of the rifle fire w.is unequalled since the days of the Marne. Many of .our men fired one hundred round?. “Becoming desperate, the Germans doubled light back on their attackers, holding up their hands.