THROUGH GERMAN LINES

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 6 January 1917, Page 6

THROUGH GERMAN LINES

STIRRING ADVENTURES OF TWO ANZACS. HOW A PARTY OF SEVEN GOT INTO ENEMY TRENCH. How a party of seven got into a German trench is told by Captain C. E. W. Bean, the " Eye-witness' ' with the Australian forces in France, in describing a deliberate attack ;on Mtoquet Farm. The attack, he says, was timed before five in the morning, while it was still dark. Part of a Victorian brigade—not the very oldest of our troops but Gallipoli troops, for all that —was in the line at that period and carried out the attack. There were three known difficulties. One was Moquet Farm on the right. The second was a strong point or, redoubt on the left. The third was a strong point between the two, but rather further back than either. Of the three, Moquet Farm was not to be taken but screened; the furthest central strong point was to be taken; and so was that on the left. There was a magnificent short, shaTp bombardment in the dark before the dawn. So regular and accurate was it that,, as one of the' Australians said, ■"You could have smoked a fag on tho edge of it.'' All the flares from that part of the front stopped at once. They only continued to go up, like sheafs of great white lilies bending over, as they fell, from the strong points at either end of it. The first thing that happened as the barrage was shifted further -back to allow th e attack to go on was that the attacking line split up in two. Opposition was coming from a long trench which straggled away in the rear of Moquet Farm —rifle fire, flares, a little later, bombs and machine guns. The advancing line stumbled across a road marked only by some tree stumps; searched for a trench which ought to have been there, but which had been ploughed up iuto the rest of the ploughed country by shell fire; and then swung round to its right as troops yrill often do unconsciously, to meet the rifle flashes and flares. Some men, hunting for the trench in the dark, probably thougght where the firing was must be the trench they were looking for. They charged it, took a portion of it. Then the fight swallowed them. From that moment for days afterwards no certain news, came back. German machine guns were firing from the Moquet Farm on this side of them. German shells were falling up there, and there came the sound of bombs. The dust of the fight in that corner, subsided. BEHIND GERMAN TRENCH. It was two days later that there dropped into a British trench away on the left two hungry Australians. While the British were making them s»«ic tea they told simply the story of what had up till then been a mystery —the attack on- the right. It seems that while the line was wandering about at the end of j its rush looking for its objective—the trench which could no longer, be traced ' —all the officers were shot and the word went' among the men, "There's ho Germans here. Let '& take the sblanky farm.'' They went on and dropped into the trench north of the farm. There were Germans on both sides of them in the trench, and the Germans fished up a machine-gun from the rear of them. The Germans bombed from both sides and our men jumped into the shell craters alongside of the trench. They waited until one fell very close. Then in the momentary confusion they nipped into the trench itself almost rubbing shoulders with the Prussian Guardsmen manning it, scrambled through the trench and out again oevr the parapet. j They found another trench in front : of them. The process was repeated, a crawl to a neighbouring shell hole, a wait until one of our shells covered the whole place with earth and smoke, a scramble through the trench in the. -contusion. They crossed a third trench, apparently well on the German side of" the strong point mentioned above, and came safely to the lines held by an English regiment. One of the two had been slightly wounded by a bomb.