FINE WORK BY THE "TANKS."

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 20 July 1917, Page 1

FINE WORK BY THE "TANKS."

Our next thrust was again brilliantly suce M lu i'JS mu 2 us Possession of important am. iorfcreeaes, tgaiu, piercing the Hiadea-

burg line, and setting up a menace to Lens. The enemy, says Mr Percival Pliillips, were flung out of a new breach in the Hindenburg linn with the assistance of a fleet of tanks, and forced, further south, to withdraw nearer the Ganibrai defences. The loss of additional fortified villages makes even more urgent their removal nearer Douai and the occupation of other new defences. Lens and the coalfields of Northern France are no longer in a. firm grip. The enemy have lost their only remaining advantage in ground • near the Vimy Ridge by the new victory of the Canadians, while the storming of Heninel and Wancourt, south-east of Arras, at the same time, again proved that the Hindenburg line is a bogy which succumbs even more easily to our tanks and men. than the great fortresses thrown up during the two and a-half years of the German occupation of Northern France. The stormmg of Heninel and Wancourt, with the aid of a fleet of tanks, not only straightened out an unpleasant snag in the line of' our advance south of Arras, but made a further breach in this portion of the new Hindenburg defences. The Hindenburg trenches run in a south-westerly l direction in front of Heninel and Fontaine, crossing the river Cojeul near the edge of the former village. Both Heninel and Wancourt, higher up the shallow valley, were commanded by machine-gun fire from Guemappe and equally higher ground to the south-east, making our attack unusually difficult. The Hindenburg trenches were not only very strong, but exceedingly well hidden . * BEHIND SHEATHS OF. STOUT WIRE, and it was hard for the advancing infantry to see the position until they were actually upon it. I am sure the infantry themselves will gladly concede -a. large part of the honors of this engagement to the tanks, for they went right through Heninel to Wancourt and back while the battalions were still held up at the former place. Certain unite bombed down the Hindenburg line from the north-west, as others stormed Heninel from the south, and the enemy garrison found itself caught in a crossfire. The village bristled with machine guns rattling at every possible angle from every imaginable hiding-place; Their fire slackened immediately the tanks began their dreadful progress up the main street, and, although it resumed when, they had vanished in clouds of smoke in' the direction of Wancourt, it was less determined and more erratic. The tanks found Wancourt, like its neighbor, alive with Gorman mobile batteries, and they deliberately charged one after anothei-, smashing iii fronts of houses, cracking cemented emplacements like egg-shell 6, never pausing in their work of destruction. They went slowly and irresstibly up one street and down another, driving the disorganised fragments of tho garrison into the cellars or across the fields to Guemappe, through the fire of their comrades, who still showered bullets on friend and foe alike. The resistance at Wancourt wholly broken, the tanks swung about and came back through Heninel, still playing their guns on all sides. Many of the German infantry were killed in tins way, and the only survivors in both villages were about a hundred miserable Silesians, who appeared to be in the last stages of exhaustion. Meanwhile, the British troops, bombing down tho Hindenburg trenches, destroying the thick • banks of now wire and blowing in dug-outs, reached Heninel, and there was a triumphant meeting with the infantry already in possession. Tho tanks were cheered as they solemnly passed. Their record deserves a place in history, for the crews had been continuously fighting and ■advancing for more than 40 hours.

CHEERED BY THE SCOTS. Of the battle of Arras (-writes Mr Philip Gibbs) not all the details will be told in a hundred years, for to each man in all the thousands who are fighting there is a great adventure, and they are filled with sensations stronger than drink can give, so that it -will seem a wild dreani —a* dream red as flame and -white as snow. For this amazing battle, bringing to us tides of prisoners and many batteries of guns, is being fought on spring days heavy with snow, ns grim as sternest winter, except when, in odd half-hours, the sun breaks through the storm clouds and gives a magio beauty to ail this whiteness of the battlefields • and to trees furred with bars of ermine, and- to all the lacework of twigs ready for green birth. Now, as I write, there is no sun, but 'a darkness through which heavy flakes are falling. Our soldiers tire fighting through it to the east of Arras, and their steel helmets and tunics and leather jerkins are all white as the country through, which they aro forcing back the enemy. Wbile the battle was raging on the "Vimy heights, English and Scottish troops were fighting equally fiercely with more trouble to meet round about Arms The fighting was very stiff round Blangy, the suburb of Arras, where the enemy were in the broken, ruins of the houses and behind garden walls, strongly barricaded with piled sandbags. But our men smashed their way through and on. Troops of old English regiments were checked awhile at strong German works known as the Horn, Holt, Hamel, and Hon-, gest positions, and at another strong point called: the Church Work. • It was at these places that the tanks did well on a day when they had hard going because of slime and mud, and after a journey of over three miles from tlieir starting-point knocked out the German machine guns, and so let the infantry get on. Higher north, iit a point known as Railway Triangle, east-south-east of Arras, where railway lanes join, Scottish troops were held back by machine-gun fire. The enemy's works had not been destroyed by our bombardment, and our barrage had swept ahead of tlfe troops. News of the trouble was sent back, and presently back crept the barrage of our shell-fire, coming perilously close to the Scottish troops, but not too close. With marvellous accuracy the gunners found the target of the Triangle and swept it with shell-fire, so that its defences were destroyed. The Scots surged forward over the chaos of broken timber and barricades, and struggled forward again to their goal, which brought them to Feuchy Well. A tank helped them at Feuchy Chapel, cheered by the Scots as it came into action, scorning machine-gun bullets. The Harp was another strong point of the enemy's wliich caused difficulty, and another tank came up, in its queer, slow way, and the gallant men inside served their guns like a. Dreadnought, and so ended the business on that ovalshaped stronghold.