TRIUMPH ON THE SOMME.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 238, 29 December 1916, Page 5 (Supplement)

TRIUMPH ON THE SOMME.

FRONT BLAZING. ENEMY BADLY SHAKEN. "THE MEN ARE SPLENDID." It is victory and still victory; and one cannot yet tell the measure of our success, said an correspondent of British headquarters, writing on September 26. Morval is all ours. Gueudecourt is ours. All Combles is ours. . From the two sides the Allies have made junction in the village, and at last reports the blue and khaki were going on abreast somewhere beyond. Every hour tidings of some newsuccess come from one point of the battlefield or another. The contagion has spread even to the extreme left of the line, where, though all was quiescent yesterday, fierce fighting is in progress about Thiepval. Never before in this battle has the whole front blazed as it is blazing now; and everywhere, so far as we know, we win. What is best of all, from all directions, almost without exception, comes the story that our casualties are very light.

THE ENEMY RAN OR SURRENDERED. The percentage of serious wounds will probably be greater than in the early stages of the battle, but the total is so small that that is a correspondingly less serious matter; the fact being that then the Germans fought with their machine-guns and rifles stubbornly, and the number of wounded by shells was few. Now our wounded are nearly all hit with bits of shells, for the enemy is not fighting. From many points, including long stretches of formidable trench and fortified positions, we hear only stories of how the Germans ran. At one place our men went over yesterday and took 1000 yards of trench wihch was completely evacuated at their approach. At another place a wounded private told me contemptuously to-day that "We could have taken the • trench with picks and shovels." The west side of Morval seems to be full of deep dug-outs, from which the men poured, as our troops came on, with their hands in the air. The German casv alties of late have been enormously heavy, and the effect on every unit which has been thrown against us may well have been shattering.

SUCCESS EVERY DAY. More than once I have spoken of what seems to be the most striking and most brilliant aspect of our successes, namely, that for two months and a half they have gone on steadily every day. Some days our progress has been large, some days it has been small. But there has always been progress. We have never yet been held all along the line. Some days there have been many prisoners; some days there have been few. But there have been prisoners every day. We have been fighting now for some 88 days, and the prisoners average nearly 300 a day. This is an extraordinary fact. Not every day has had its proper 300, but every day has had some, and the average for the whole period is nearly 300 a day. It must be a dreadful thing for an army to find itself forced steadily back for more than two and a half months, day by day, and on every day to have —besides the immense casualties—a third of the fighting strength of a battalion surrendering to the enemy. And nothing could be mon eloquent than the >vhining toue of to-day's German wireless. I am speaking in the foregoing only of the British front; not at all of the French. And the French success has been to the full as brilliant, as our own.

MORVAL AND COMBLES. Of particular parts of the front it is not easy yet to speak in detail, but I understand that the taking of Morval was a very fin; performance. Of the troops which, on our s : de, took part in the capture cf CViii'vles, i hear that before the tillage—it { s almost a town—they had only one serious iro.ich to carry, and they took it almrst without opposition. .All nigU iong oir guns lial kept up a heavy barrage on Siw ioad3 into and out ->f Com':!. J s or tie oth-j: 3ide, aii-i in the ear!v a*. >rr?ng, while it was yet dark, our men went on and cleared an orchard which was expected to prove troublesome on the western side. At a third push forward in the dawn they went on into Combles itself, encountering comparatively slight resistance, and meeting the French in the middle of the place. The catacomb-like dugouts of tho village were, I hear, full of German wounded and dead.

One gallant story I hear, from one of our wounded men, of a German officer who, when our men came bombing along the trench, mounted the parapet, and, by the light of Verey lights, used his revolver against them as they came on. My friend had two revolver bullets, one in each of his legs. But on the whole the tale of the two days' fighting is the most discreditable to the Germans of any since this battle began. On no former occasion has the individual superiority of our men in morale and fighting spirit been more apparent. What was said in the first weeks of the war two years ago remains as true to-day: "The men art splendid."