LA BASSEE VILLE FIGHT.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 26 September 1917, Page 3

LA BASSEE VILLE FIGHT.

WORK OF NEW ZEALANDERS FIFTY MINUTES’ GRIM EFFORT. The work of the New Zealanders in the great British advance at Ypres. which began on July 31, was to form the southern flank of the advancing line. Correspondents at British headquarters state that they had only a very slight advance to make to keep step with the rest of the line, and they did it punctually. At some points there was sharp fighting, as at La Bassee Villc, which the New Zealanders found honeycombed with cellars and dugouts full of Germans, with the usual mach-ine-gun defences. After the place was captured, the enemy counter-at-tadked three times in the course of tFe day. Once he gained a foothold, only to be immediately thrown out, and the other attacks were broken by our guns and the New Zealand rifles. The enemy casualties here were very heavy and the dugouts simply full of German dead. In the Basse Yille area the fields are divided by hedges, and through those hedges Germans had strung barbed-wire besides digging machine-gun pits or using shell-holes, concealed with wirenetting, In spite of wire and machineguns the New Zealanders cleaned out the whole region, and one battalion which got home with its bayonets afterwards buried over 100 German dead among the hedges and shell-holes. Below here the Australians had a point of local importance to take in a ruined windmill on a slight but commanding knoll It was taken by them, retaken in a counter-attack, taken by them, retaken in a counter-attack, taken again, and remains in their hands. The whole of this southern part of the attack, while the advance was not of any great depth, was extremely cleanly and thoroughly executed and with casualties which were very gratifyingly slight. Another despatch stated that the New Zealanders found stout foes' at .La Basse Yille. The ruins had been taken before the battle, but a strong counterattack had brought them again within the enemy lines. The New Zealanders drove into the village on the first wave of the battle, and found it full of good Gorman troops,-The Germans had many machine-guns in string positions and even when the attackers swarmed in among them the gunners and bombers tried to hold their ground. There were 50 minutes of grim effort by the New Zealanders before La Basse Yille was wholly theirs and before the remnants of the garrison which had escaped were retreating in the direction of Warneton. As at Hollebeke, cellars full of Germans who would not come out were blown in, and the New Zealanders sent -word ba<fk after the capture that they could not use these underground refuges at the moment because they were filled with bodies. Nothing is left of La Bassee Yille. The Germans defences beyond it, too, were demolished by our artillery