HOW ANZACS SMASHED GERMAN ATTACKS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 227, 17 November 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW ANZACS SMASHED GERMAN ATTACKS.

NEW ZEALANDERS' REPEATED BAYONET CHARGE IN NIOHT BATTLE.

CANADIANS' GREAT FIGHT AT COIRCELETTE.

(By Philip Gibbs, the "Daily Chr

■onicleY' Special Correspondent.)

WITH THE BRITISH ARMIES IN THE FIELD,

Gorman battery that was knocked out by our guns. 'However, this was a side-show, and the Tanks must not take all the glory away from the infantry, who had not armoured skins, alas! and who were facing murderous tire elsewhere. They had been ordered to swing left to make a flanking front up the edge of a valley running north-west of 1' lers, light away beyond the village, and this they did most gallantly, although at the time they stuck out like a thin wedge into German territory, because at that time they had no support on their left (our English fellows, as I have described in an earlier despatch, had been having a fearful time in and beyond High Wood), and on the right the other English troops were busy with the capture of Flers. HAZARDOUS POSITION. It was clearly and undeniably a hazardous position for the New Zealanders, all alone out there, and they were ordered to fall back to the line going straight westwards from the top of Flers village, which they helped to hold, on the night of the 15th to tlio 16th.

September 23. It was inevitable that alter the great battle of September 15 our line should have ragged edges and run up or down into small salients. This was due to the greater progress made by different bodies of troops; and to the way in which isolated groups of Germans held on stubbornly to these stretches of ground not in the general line of our advance. During the past forty-eight hours a good deal has been don.3 to clear out these "pockets," or wedges, and to straighten out the line from Courcel,ette eastward.

This linking-up and clearing-up work, now done to a great extent, puts us in a stronger position of defence to hold what we have gained against any attempts made by tlie enemy in coun-ter-attacks.

Ho h as mad'.' many attempts since ! September 15th to chive our troops l , out of the high ground, which is vital j to his means of observation, and the failure of them lias cost him ;v great price in life. DESPERATE THRUSTS. Among tlie most desperate thrusts,, pressed with stubborn bravery by r bodies of German soidiers collected i hastily and flung with but little plan ' or preliminary organisation against our j lines, were those directed upon the j New Zealanders, who repulsed them 1 after hard and long conflicts fought , out for the most part with the naked j Stee l" • T 1 1 i. In all the fighting since July Ist there lias not been anything more fierce or bloody than these hand-to- 1 hand struggles on the left of Flers, and th,o New Zealanders have gained a greater name for themselves (it was al- I ready a great name, since Gallipoli) as soldiers who hate to give up what they have gained, who will hold on to ground with a grim obstinacy ag- , ainst heavy odds, and if they are or- I der.ed to retreat because of the military j situation round them, come back •, again with a stern resolve to " get the goods." . j This is not only my reading of the i men, and I do not pretend to know ! them well, but is the summing up of , an officer, not from their own country, who has seen them fight during these I last few days, and who spoke of them j with a thrill of admiration in his voice after watching the stoicism . with which they endured great shell- , fire, the spirit with which they attack- _ cd alter great fatigues and hardships, j and the rally of men. discouraged for J a while by their loss of officers, which , swept tlie Germans back in panic- . stricken flight. 1

From that day onwards the enemy made repeated counter-attacks. Sometimes they were in feeble strength, shattered quickly, but they grew in intensity and numbers as the days passed. while the New Zealanders were stili in a rather precarious position, "a rocky position," said one of their officers," owing to the weakness ou their left flank. Right down on that tiank Germans were still holding out in shell craters with a way open behind them, so that supports might conio down to drive a wedge between the New Zealanders and the English troops to tho north of High Wood. This was attempted by something like a brigade of Germans, who advanced in six or seven waves upon the English soldiers who were outnumbered by more than two to one in a steady, determined way. They were met out in the open with the bayonet. It was the old way of fighting, men meeting men, staring into each other's cys. trusting to their own strength and skill with sharp steel, and not to engines of war with high explosives or quick-tiring guns. LIKE THE TOURNEY DAYS.

If men light, it is the best way, though not pleasant and agreeable for ladies to watch from silken canopies, as in the olden days of the tourney, when gentlemen hacked at each other with axes just for fun. A New Zealand officer watched it from a little distance, and his breath came quick when lie described it to nio. The German ranks were broken, and a remnant fled.

A WEEK'S STRUGGLE. |

But it was not so long nor so bloody a fight ;is tliat which the New Zealanders themselves had to encounter threo days ago. The enemy struck a blow against the New Zealand troops, at the joining point between those men and their comrades on the left, who had eoni.e i;p to the west of Flers. The New Zcalanders who were Canterbury men were beaten back twice, and twice regained the ground. All through the night of September 20th until the dawn of the 21st, there was violent bomb fighting and bayonet fighting. There was no straight line of men. British on one side, German on the other. It was a confused mass, isolated bodies of men struggling around shell craters and bits of trench, single figures lighting twos and threes, groups joining to form lines which surged backwards and forwards, and a night horrible with the crash of b.unbs and the cries of the dying.

This struggle covers a week's fighting since September loth, when at dawn the New Zealanders advanced hi ■ waves to a series of positions which ' would bi insz them up to the left rf , Flers if they had the luck to get as far. On their right were the troops, whose capture of Fleis village I have already described, and on their leftother troops attacking High AYood and thi> ground north of it. j The men of New Zealand went forward with hardly a cheek, to tho Ger- 1 man switch trench 000 yards from the starting line. They were men of , Auckland, Canterbury, Otago and ! Wellington, and they put their trust in the bayonet, and desired to get close to their enemy. I They had their desire. Tn the switch trench the Germans defended themselves to the last gasp, and, as far as I can make out. only four of them were left alive after that frightful encounter. It was a fight to the death on both sides, and the New ' Zealanders did not cross that ditch at full strength. |

OFFICER'S SPLENDID COURAGE

On the way up, they lost under shrapnel and machine gun fire. On the other side of the ditch their lines were thinner. Hut they were on the other side, and the ditch behind them was a grave upon which they tinned their backs, to get across the next stretch of ground to trenches eight hundred yards ahead. IN OPEN ORDER. The New Zealand Rifles covered this ground quickly, moving in open order, but keeping in touch with each other by line d'sccipline and an esprit de corps which is better than discipline. That next system of trench work, two lino-; heavily wired and deeply dug, part of the famous Flers line, was a great obstacle. Our gun-fire, grand as it had been, had not laid ail the wire low nor destroyed the trenches. A swish of maehine-gun bullets showed that the enemy was alive and savage.

One New Zealand officer, a very splendid, heroic man, was the life and soul of this defence and counter-at-tack.

There wt re moments when some of li is men were disheartened because their line had fallen back, and the number of their wounded lay too thick about them. Ho put new fire into them by the flame of his own spirit. He led them forward again, rallying tho gloomy ones, so careless of lis own life, so eager for the honour of New Zealand, that they followed him under a kind of spell, because of the magic in him.

They thrust back the enemy, put his to flight down the valley, remained masters of the ground when the dawn brightened into the full light of day, revealing the carnage that had been hidden in the night. It was not tho end of the fighting here. In tho afternoon the enemy came again, in strong numbers —sent forward by their high command, men at the end of far telephones, desperate to retake the ground, and ordering new assaults which were sentences of death to German soldiers not at the end of lar telephones, but very near t;i British bayonets.

An infiintry assault on such a line liad to I v. 1 paid lor, sometimes bygreat numbers of dead and wounded. But it was the day of the Tanks. Two of them had tried to keep pacj with tlio New //.'aland attack, hut had lagged behind like short-winded creatures suffering from "stitch" —and no wond.'r, looking at the shell craters and pits across which they had to bring their long bodies, crawling in and crawling out. with their tails above their heads and their heads above their tails. Hut tiiey arrived in time to attack the Flers hue and in a very deliberate and stolid way they sidled along the barb d wire, smashing it into the earth, be lore poking their big snouts over tlio (li i man parapets, hauling tlumselv, s up. and firing from both fl inks upon the German machine-gun teams.

BAYONET TO BAYONET. They came i<n thickly, these doomed men, shoulder to should." - , and it was again the captain of the Canterbury's who lei his men against them in a great bayonet charge, right a< ross the open.

It was bayonet against bayonet, 'or th.' Germans stood t > receive the charge, though with blanched fac.es. For tlio New Zealanders came upon tlu-ni -it the trot, and then sprang forward with bayonets as (prick as knitt mg n>'( die* Thj Germans cried out in terror. Down the hillsid'\ beyond, those who coidd not escape ran, and fei| as they ran. It was a rout and the end of the counter-attack

With this noteworthy h.'lp, which saved t:me and trouble and life, the New Zealai'd 'i's took the double trenches of the Flers line, and again pushed on another 700 yards, across a sunken road wtili stcvp banks and very deep dup-outs, where the enemy did not. st-iv to me.'t them until they had (stablished themselves on a line running westwards from th.> top of Flers village, now in the hands of our Fn"tish l ids. One of the Tanks followed them, getting down the steep bank with its liny fo earth, and lumbering up the other s.de l : ke a huge el'pliant (without a trunk.) A German hntt'Tv 1000 vards awav searched for if with shell-fire, but- did not get within bitting distance of its armoured skin. Eventually it was tlio

The New Zealanders were now sure of themselves They knew that with the bayonet they can meet the Germans as their masters. So scornful are they of their bayonet fighting that they have it in their hearts to pity them, riul say "Poor devils!'' To my mind, and to others, the finest heroism was shown by the NewZealand (stretcher-bearers. They did not (barge with the bayonet. All their duty was to go out across open country in cool blood to pick up men lying there in blood that was not cool unless tli.'V had lain there too long. They hud to go through salvors of li ve-pcint-nmes, which tore up the

ground about them, and buried them, and mangled many of them. And they went unite steadily and quietly, not once or twice, but hour after hour, until more than sixty of them had fallen, and hour after hour they carried out their work of rescue, quite careless of themselves.