ANZACS' GREAT DAY.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 28 March 1917, Page 5

ANZACS' GREAT DAY.

HOW THEY ENTERED BAPAUME. ON THE HEELS OF THE HUNS. A RICHLY MERITED HONOUR. (From C. E. W. BEAN, Official Corres- • pondeut with the A.1.F.) British Headquarters in France, March 17. To-day lias been a great day for tho Australian soldiers. In the small hours of this morning Australian patjrlos found that the Germans who had been holding the trenches until a late hour that night were retiring from the trenches north of Bapaume. By six o'clock the New South Wales and Victorian troops were well out into the country behind the German line. About 8 o'clock troops from a certain battallion drawn from all the Australasian States were able to work through the Bapaume defences into the town of Bapaume itself. The retiring enemy sniped at them from the houses, but the Australians pushed through the town. At 11 o'clock the commander of the leading company was able to report that, emerging from Bapaume, "We came in contact with the enemy. We broke into skirmishing order and gained our new line." There some of us found them a couple of hours later lying out on green grass in skirmishing order, just, as men fought in South Africa. Green paddocks sloped gently away on all sides, except behind where the enemy was pounding heavy shells into the red roofs of the .old town. Angry black bursts and the heavy white smoke of burning roof beams resembled a picture of old-time warfare. But before us for the first time in this war, so far as the Australian part of it goes, was open country.

Away to the right one could see, with the linked eye, coming towards us nine specks of men in extended order, with horsemen behind them. Presently they moved away across country. It was a German patrol keeping in touch between two of thei,r rearguard positions. Behind them three or four horse waggons were moving slowly away from us. We could just see the teams and men following well out of range of rifle fire. The Germans who stayed last in the town had made a stand with machineguns at the end of the town. They then ran "like irabbits," as an officer said, to a small trench behind barbed wire, we could see like a line of rusty gorge scrub about half a mile in front. There lay our men on the grass in the open, as men fought in the South African war under the blue sky and bright sun, sniping at every German who showed his nose. Away to the north, behind some of the last houses or trees of the town,, a machine-gun was rattling every now an again. Far behind on the horizon, a dark mibbon of smoke trailed away from some villages burnt by the retiring Germans. Our men are well through those villages, hot on their heels.

Bapaume is less shattered than any town in the Somme battlefield, but more shattered than ‘Albert. Few houses, if any, could be inhabited. With the taking of Bapaume the Australians have left the Somme battlefield with its frightful, shell-battered surface definitely behind them. We are out on green country now. On the way back we met an Australian youngster proudly wearing a bright green ribbon in a buttonhole. No one will grudge the Australians the satisfaction they feel this-St. Patrick ’s day. None except Austrafiians were within miles of this part of the "line. After holding for. five long months of severe winter most of the trenches opposite this town, under the appalling conditions of this part of the Somme battle-field, they deserved the honour as richly as any merited in this War.