ATTACK AT LE TRANSLOY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1690, 24 March 1917, Page 4

ATTACK AT LE TRANSLOY.

ENEMY TAKEN BY SURPRISE. SELECTED POSITION GAINED. A description of one of the “successful operations” which have prepared the way for the great advance in the Somme region was given by Mr Philip Gibbs, in relating the events on January 27th, in the neighbourhood of the Transloy, one of the villages which has now been captured. Le Transloy itself is a place of some importance, being the largest populated centre between Peronne, Bapaume, and Albert. It is a straggling place, stretching along the two sides of the road running between Peronne and Bapaume, and it was strongly fortified by the Germans. The line at this point was, until recently, defended by the French, and it was they who, after the capture of Combles, got close up to Le Transloy by seizing the villages of Lesboeufs, Morval, and part of Sailly-Saillisel at the same time that the British were advancing their line by the capture of Gueudecourt. DEADLY WORK ALONG THE LINE. The “show” —as our men call it —near Le Transloy was more than a raid —those daily in-and-out dashes which are doing most deadlywork along our line, Mr Gibbs wrote: —It was an attack for the definite purpose of gaining an important bit of ground on the slope which goes down to the ruined village, and of driving the enemy out of some strong points. The interest of it, involving the capture of six officers and 352 men of picked regiments, is the manner in which we caught the enemy utterly by surprise, and the rapid, easy wayin which the whole operation was done. It was a grim, cold morning—piercingly- cold, with a wind cutting like a knife across the snowfields, not a morning when men might be expected to go out into the nakedness of No Man’s Land, a morning when the German officers and men of the 119th and 121st Regiments, the Wurttembergers of Konigin Olga, were glad to staydown in the warmth of their dugouts. They had some good dugouts in and near the Sunken Road, which runs up from Morval to Le Transloy. The trenches on either side of the Sunken Road were not happy places for Wurttembergers. For months past our guns had been pounding them so (hat they were mostly battered down, and only held here and there by little groups of men, who dug themselves in. There was no wire in front of them, and here during the wet weather, and now during the great frost, the enemy troops suffered badly from trench-feet and stomach troubles, and in spite of his morale —they were all stout-hearted men —from what the French call ‘Cafard,” and Englishmen the hump. NO PRELIMINARY BOMBARDMENT. In our trenches the men were fpiiet, but busy, and above ground, instead of below. They were waiting for a signal from the guns, and had their bayonets fixed, bombs slung about them, and iron rations slung to their belts. A rum ration was served round, and the men drank it, and felt the glow of it, so that the white waste of No Man’s Land did not look so cold and menacing. They were North British and Irish, less stolid than English troops, and more quickly fired, perhaps, to the spirit of an attack. Suddenly, at about half-past five, there was'a terrific crash of guns, and at the same moment the men scrambled up into the open, and, with their bayonets low, went out into No Man’s Land, each man’s footsteps making a trail in the snow. 1 think it took about four minutes, that passage of the lonely ground, which was a hundred yards or so between the lines, all pock-marked with shell holes, and hard as iron after the freezing quagmire. There was no preliminary bombardment. As soon as the guns went off the men went, with the line of shells not far in front of them. They found no men above ground, when they pierced the German line. It was curious and uncanny —the utter lifelessness of the place they came to capture. They knew quickly that they had surprised the enemy utterly. They found the dug-outs, and called down the challenge, and heard it answered. The Wurttembergers came up dazed with the effect of the capture, hardly believing it, as men in a dream.

They were abashed. They said they would have put up a fight if they had had any kind of chance. But they were trapped. They could do nothing but surrender with the best grace possible. On the right, from two isolated bits of trench, there came the burst of rifle fire. A few Germans there had time to recover from the stunning blow of the first surprise and fought pluckily 1,111 overpowered. Our men went on further than the objective given them, at a point 500 yards away from the German first line, and established themselves there. Prom neighbouring ground, through the white haze over the snowflelds, red lights went up with the S.O.S. signal, and presently the German gunners got busy. But the prisoners were bundled back to the omnibuses, and the men took possession of the dug-outs.