The Reverse at Amiens.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 15, 4 September 1914, Page 5

The Reverse at Amiens.

GRAPHIC NARRATIVE OF TROOPS' PLUCK.

EXPEDITIONARY FORCE AS AN ARMY OF ATHLETES.

SHEER WEIGHT OF GERMAN NUMBERS EVIDENT.

(Received 9.30 a.m.) London, September 3

The Daily Telegraph correspondent says: On Sunday the French, under General Pau, on the British, right, were attacked by the Tenth Corps of Imperial Guards, but they heroically received the attack from the elite of the German army. Soon the French got the upper hand. They took a vigorous offensive and hammered at the enemy, completely demoralising them. One German army was completely broken and thrown into , and being cut off on both sides from supports lost fearfully. The remnant withdrew, leaving an enormous number of wounded prisoners in the valley. As the French left was, however, bent back, the offensive could not be persisted in.

A French officer stated that the Expeditionary Force was still intact, and continues to show superb valour in the face of colossal odds and loss, taking far less than it # gave, He marvelled at the condition of the British troops, who bear the strain even better than the French. They seem to be an army of athletes at the top of their form.

The Daily Telegraph correspondent reports that he visited the rear of the French on the left of the British lines. The Allies were being driven back by sheer weight of numbers, but it was an orderly retirement, not a retreat. If, he says, all the moves in this fearful campaign had been arranged beforehand, they could not have been carried out with greater precision. The German army is being gradually narrowed at the principal attacking point, until now it is a V-shaped mass pointing directly lo Paris.

Another correspondent reports that on th,e 28th the Allies held a crescent on wooded heights. The British, on the left, and centre, were supporting a heavy thrust of the main German advance with Paris troops on the right. At least a million Germans Were* moving on Saturday afternoon as a vanguard, supported by a fresh army corps from Belgium. Cavalry were sweeping across a great tract of country with a great mass of artillery, under cover of which infantry moved as a wedge against the English. The English wing found it impossible to resist the onslaught. ' The British gunnery was magnificent, and shelled the advancing columns so that the dead were heaped along the road, but as one of the gunners said: "It made no manner of difference; as soon as we smashed one lot, another followed in column after column." The railway was destroyed, the bridges being blown up on the main line from Amiens to Paris and on the branch lines from Dieppe. Then occurred fighting in which all the British fell back.

(Amiens, formerly the chief town of Picardy, now the capital of the Department of-the Sotnme, stands ;on| the river of that nam© .at a distance of" about forty miles from the ' English - Channel. • It iras once a ; place ,oi~considerable strtrngth, and played an important part in the wars of the Middle Ages. The town has .a. marvellous Cathedral, and is the' principal 'station' oh the Northern Railway in. France The population is about 90,000. It was taken by the Germans', ' after a,' severe conflict in 187.0.,). ~',,•" M■; Jit >! <.'! J