“BATTLE OF KANGAROOS.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1663, 18 January 1917, Page 4

“BATTLE OF KANGAROOS.”

FRENCH VIEW OF THE BRITISH. , TERRIFYING AND SPLENDID. The French correspondents on the British front speak with undisguised admiration ot the intoxicating dash and fury of the last attack of our troops, says a correspondent in a telegram dated November 21st.

The Matin special correspondent says: “I saw from the starting trench one of these waves of assault launch itself over the top, a vision terrifying and splendid. The men crouched in the mud hardened .by wind, all the springs of their souls and the muscles stretched to the utmost tension, their features as rigid as marble. Then at a signal came an onrush of human forces like undammed water. Men dashed along with ringing cheers, and then followed a wild race amid a humcane ot shells, five projectiles to the second. It was a race broken by voluntary prostrations face to ground, by sudden flattenings and sudden risings, a dash at once cautious and grandiose, as if the earth from all around had suddenly set itself running. A wounded man summed it up as the ‘Battle of Kau-

garoos.’ “The tanks behaved well, as is their habit. ■ One remained for a lime stuck fast by I know not what hitch. The Bodies hurled themselves at it, and, yelling like maddened Red Indians, danced a scalp lance round the monster. Sublimely indifferent, the tank closed its portholes, lowered the curtains, and shut the doors, and then waited philosophically for the end of the shower, not without letting loose from time to time some saucy broadsides from machine guns to kill time and, incidentally, a few Bodies. Grenades glanced off its carapace like bubbles on the back of a whale, and if the Boehes had been able to lend an ear they would have heard the whale and all its Jonahs roaring with Homeric laughter. Soon Ifter a detachment dashed up to help the tank, which then blithely once more pointed its nose towards the enemy.