FIGHTING ON THE SOMME.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 26 January 1917, Page 5

FIGHTING ON THE SOMME.

1 OFFICER'S DARING EXPLOIT. In their push forward on the Somme front British troops have been hampered by an extremely violent gale. This, however, has had its compensations. Blowing for twenty-tour iitu.. on end, it had the welcome ft'feei ■ ■ partially drying the ground, which ■had been reduced to a veritable sea oil mud by weeks or incessant heavy rain falls. In making careful reconnaissances men have been compelled u. crawl along in a tumbled tangle of craters, sinking in mere mud to tiie waist before finding - foothold that would carry them. Yet our troo; are making methodical, if slow progress in working their way through the minor German defences. A trench known as "Zenith" was gained by our men with very little loss. A subsequent thrust (according to advice from British headquarters) seems to -have taken us into what in known as Hazy Trench and brought us to a point which should make the Germans before Le Transiloy begin to fcoi uncomfortable all but the further ed<»e of the minor ridge, which runs north ward before that place being now in our hands.

Farther to the left we also made a movement which was less successful in the region of the Butte de Warlencourt; or, rather, we were at first or, tirely successful here, but failed t. hold the ground won. The Butte i, has been so battered by our artiller that for purposes of actual occupatL. it is of small use to the enemy, thoug";: he still seems to be able to retain ma-chine-guns in one angle of it. Tin ground about it, however, -has seme local • strategical value, as it commands the dip or gully, which runs thence down towards Eaucourt l'Abbaye. We attacked this ground and. push ing up on the west side of it, cleared the German trenches before and about the B'utte itself, and for some ;.;. held a temporary line to the north of it. The attack was very successfu. and heavy casualties were inflicted on the enemy, who seems to have been caught at the time of relieving his troops in the front line. Afterwards our improvised line was subjected to successive counter-attacks,, as well as being exposed to machine-gun fire from the north-east, and we had to fall back again to a line on this side of the Butte. A SINGLE HANDED RAID. During the reconnaissance upon "Zenith." a young officer, crawling forward upon this work, actually made his way into the German trench. The night was dead black, with spits of rain. He was able to move some way along the trench, passing dug-outs where worn-out men slept heavily, and discovered at last a machine-gun bay. with its viperish little gun under its waterproof covering. Its crew slept near by.

This was the point he selected for leaving the trench and returning with the information he had gathered. And he took the gun with him, single-hand-ed, and brought it intact across the awful intervening ground to its long home in our lines. Then, like one that caps a good story with a better, the officer commanding our front line out forward his contribution to the night's entertainment. His scouts had told him much that lie was glad to hear; and he decided that he would attack at once. He made his dispositions, and very quietly, crawling, slithering, and falling as silently as they might, he took his men over to the German position and tumbled them in on top of the enemy before a single machine gun had waked up. For nearly all the garrison 01 the trench, the first intimation that something was happening to them was the crash of the grenades as our bombers drove along the line and the bayonets went, to work with the Germans, who poured from the shallow dugouts beneath the parapets to face the plunging sleel points. . Most of them, o 4 ' course, got away in the darkness: forty-eight surrendered and have come out as prisoners; and four machineguns remained to be added zo the one which the scouting officer had—the only apt word--"stolen" earlier in the night. Zenith trench was ours i'rom end to end. and the total of our casualties was twelve.