CAPTURE OF BELLEVUE.

Taihape Daily Times, 8 November 1917, Page 2

CAPTURE OF BELLEVUE.

CANADIAN ATTACK. FIERCE GERMAN RESISTANCE. LONDON, October 30 Mr. Perry Robinson, senCs a graphic description of tbe capture by*tliG Canadians of tbe complicated nests of positions on Bellevue Spur, over bogs, streams, mud, sliell-holes, in torrents of rain, and through intense machinegun and artillery fire. The Germans rushed up field guns at Passchendacle, and fired shrapnel almost point-blank, while snipers and machine gunners in numberless isolated "posts mlidc the storm of bullets terrific. The Canadians were compelled to half midway to their objectives. The English were cheeked on their loft, and this exnosed the Canadians’ flank; but the difficulties wer .eovcrcome, and contact was established by eleven o’clock. Throughout the aftcrncf'on. fehte jposi;

tion was perilous. The first German cornter attack was caught by the artillery and dispersed. The second was stronger and had to be fought with 12 hours’ dreadful fighting, and were lying there in mud waste, exposed to fire, and outnumbered they were reinforced by troops who had gallantly come through the enemy barrage. Shortly before six o’clock, when the clay was closing in, the line rose from the mud and' the shell-holes and swept forward over the tumbled ruins of trenches, endless entanglements, and debris. Rushing, bombing and storming the concrete positions clear up ‘'the slopes the men reached a road in which were IS concreted machine-guns and heavy lines of Germans. The Canadians stormed through, and when it was eight o ’clock the place was clear. By moonlight the whole of Bellevue was captured. It had been wild, desperate fighting in the dark. A sterner or more determined piece of work, had never been done by tired men. The spur was stern with German dead, being the price of their fierce, concentrated resistance.

The heavy blow launched at dawn followed 12 days of ceaseless pounding of Bellevue and Passehendaolc. The Australians’ part in the operations was a very minor one, a few troops TSeing engaged merely in protecting the right flank, with a narrow movement on the railway.

The battle extended far to the northward beyond Poelcapple, into the. Houthulst Forest. The place of honour was given to the Canadians, whose objectives included Bellevue. The Australians and New Zealanders were disappointed at having to hand over the completion of the capture of the ridge to the Canadians, who, however, to the utmost appreciate the result of the previous fighting. A noteworthy feature of the Canadians’ entry Into the. (Yp'res region was a visit of their generals to an outlying shell-hole, whence they, Closely scrutinised Bellevue. They lay on their stomachs in the mud and studied the retails of the system of this remarkable bastion.

Bellevue Spur is an ugly V-shaped hill, rising, to the height of 200 ft. above the wooded* Eababeke (Creek. Its brown sides extend for ioOyds. back, in Passchendaele township. At the point of the V, which is about 200 yards wide, a deep concrete structure stood overlooking our lines, the narrow slits manned by machine-gunners and snipers, governing, every approach Two irregular brown lines, each 10ft deep, extended across, the front of the redoubt, downhill to the valley, where a smaller redoubt barred the flank. These lines are wire. Viewed from a shell-hole in our front line cross the southern valley, Bellevue* looked a forbidding strongifSld. and worthy ot the scene of one of the greatest incidents of the war. Its power is intensely impressive It seems to embody all the formidability and strength A Germany's ambitions. It looked desolate and with no sign ,of bfe or movement but it was full of hidden power.