CANADIANS' FIGHT.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 August 1917, Page 4

CANADIANS' FIGHT.

A DECEPTIVE.SCENE OF

PEACE,

(From W. Beach Thomas.)

Wap Correspondents’ Headquarters, France June 5.

I watched this morning from the eastern slope of the Vimy Ridge, in conditions of perfect visibility, the scene of yesterday’s bitter encounter between the Canadians and the 56th Bavarian Division. A few shells falling with a snipers accuracy set the red tiles flying in one of the ridges of houses that radiate out from the |iens suburbs, but the battle was completely over and the day quieter than-the days of the preceding lull. Seldom have advance and repulse trod so quickly on each other’s heels but left so little turmoil in their wake. The battle was an epitome of much recent lighting, though more concentrated and desperate. When the Canadians, using the brilliant moonlight, left their trenches at midnight on Saturday they went straight to their haven. They charged through Ha Coulotte, though it was 'still populous with machine guns ; they penetrated the ruins oi the brewery and made firm in what was once the electric-power station, almost o,; the banks ot the 'Scutcher- River. Mpch of it was hard fighting, but it was quick fighting for the enemy had been terribly punished by shell-fire and by gas. Some of the hundred prisoners taken were quite dazed aud told alarmist stories of the effects of our gas before the attack openedThe Canadians worked with furious energy to make the position firm. One of their businesses was to erect stops in the trendies, for a.t some places we were occupying an extension of lines occupied in force by' the enemy. One ot these stops, or earth and sandbag barriers, was built just beyond the second mouth of a German dug-out. Unfortunately'it had not occurred to the builder that a dug-out may have three mojilhs, and through the third mouth of this some Germans wormed their way past. A furious hand-to hand fight followed, with the men- holding this vital point.

POSITION UNTENABLE. ' On Sunday morning the Canadian right wing was forced back almqst to its original line, and the left, holding the electricity works, spent the dqyi.ll vigorous work for tlie defence of its now vulnerable right flank. All Sunday the enemy, who has much multiplied his artillery' and has perfect cover for it in. a thousand groups of works hud buildings round mines of Hens, poured shells 011 the thinned garrison of the electricity works, and alter some ten hours ot shelling attacked the place in force from the trenches on the right and from groups of houses on the front The place had become quite untenable, and the gallant garrison, after taking toll of the attacking, groups, withdrew at about seven o’clock on Sunday evening. The mark of the fighting was the absence of counter-battery work, The German guns spent all their efforts on the infantry lines, and so drove us out just as we had driven them.

After, such a tornado it was hard to believe that such serenity could follow. Nothing could have less resembled a battlefield than the peaceful valley of the Souchez. below the Green Wood. While Vimy' was still repulsive with the smells and foulness that follow in-

sensate shelling and mining, the country where th,e fight really was, where man and material had been smashed to pulp a few hours earlier, was sunk in profound peace. The only moving thing I saw, and I could see up to the great tower of Donai, was one German figure, who crossed from the end of a chalk trench to the concealment of a house. .

Seldom was the deadness of peace more deceptive, more secretive of terrors y r et to come.