GERMAN STAFF CONFUSION.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 15 August 1917, Page 5

GERMAN STAFF CONFUSION.

In this connection it is interesting to observe that there seems to be a certain amount of confusion and disturbance in the councils of the German High Command. They had not discounted beforehand the extent of the British successes, and in several cases their attempts at reaction suggest that their staff work was inadequate. The enemy's explanation of hi s defeat, as expressed in the official communique, already betrayed an evident uneasiness and discomfort, since abstract dissertations on the art of war should find no place in a mere statement of what has occurred. It can only have been through bad staff work that a whole division lost its way, owing to want of precise orders, and blundered into the barbed wire, where it suffered*very heavy casualties.

The enemy's losses, to judge from the information that I have gathered from various points-of the battle front, must have been very high. To hold the line the enemy had packed his first position with men, and this rendered the preliminary bombardment terribly effective. SHELTER THAT ARE TRAPS. An order of Hindenburg, issued after the French victory at Verdun, had directed the destruction, of all deep shelters in the advanced German lines, since experience had shown that the men would not come out of them to meet the assault, and that, they simply served as traps in which their occupants either surrendered or were killed by grenade fire without a chance of striking an effective blow in their own defence. This order does not seem to" have been generally obeyed, since a large number of Germans were captured in deep shelters at no" great distance from the front line.

Few feats of arms" during the war are more brilliant .than the action in Champagne yesterday,, which resulted in the French establishing themselves along the line of crests south of Moronvillers. These crests were positions of the greatest importance.. In the past I had often looked at them behind the French trenches, but though, their value was obviously great, it was impossible to realise how completely they dominated the whole region. It was only to-day when I had climbed up the spur of a hill same 700 ft. high, called picturesquely by the troops Mont Sans Xom (Nameless Mount), that I could appreciate the enormous strength of the German positions on this point of the front. ' -

DOMINATING CRESTS. From Nameless Mount and the neighbouring hills, now all in French hands, the enemy overlooked an enormous tract of land, and nothing that went on in the French lines could escape his notice. It was relatively easy for their observers to spot the exact position of every battery brought into action within several miles of the French front lines and to correct the fire of their own artillery with the utmost accuracj 7 . These positions had been fortified as their importance demanded, and nothing had been omitted that might make them impregnable. It must be acknowledged that. the Germans are past-masters in the art of fortification and that when they took up these positions after the Battle of the Marne they chose their line in masterly fashion. ■ -

Yet all the trenches, barbed wire, and machine-guns proved unavailing yesterday morning, when, at dawn, the French swept out of their trenches, and after crossing about 200 yards of No Maii's Land leapt down into the enemy's first-line trenches. The artillery preparation had been admirably carried out, and though many men remained alive in the deepest dug-outs, they had no fighting spirit left in them The attacking troops fought their way up the hill with such speed that they reached in twenty minutes a point on the crests that it took us to-day an hour's hard walking to attain. EEADY SURRENDER, A captain who had taken part in the attack said:— "On the hillside there were still a number of machine gun shelters left, and it was extraordinary that our casaulties were so small. The men, however, were stupefied with the bombardment, and then we attacked suddenly in the half-light of dawn and in such weather that they thought themselves safe from an immediate assault. We fWfint up ipartly hidden in- the gusts of snow, and the German fire was very wild, Bad weather has its advantages and by this time we were accustomed to fighting in anything. When we reached our objective we found that the Bodies had very kindly left.