ON THE LENS SECTOR.

Taihape Daily Times, 22 November 1917, Page 6

ON THE LENS SECTOR.

CANADIANS TIGHT LIKE LIONS POR THE POSITIONS. To the south of Lens, said Mr. Philip Gibbs, describing the recent fighting in the Lens sector, there is a slag heap overgrown with -weeds called the Green Crassier. It was the scene of great fighting, for in the morning the Canadians who are showing an indomitable spirit after ten, days of most furious attacks and coun-ter-attacks, launched an assault upon it and seized the position. Later in the day the enemy came back in strength and, after violent efforts, succeeded in thrusting the Canadians off the crest of this old cling to the western side. The Canadians, have fought here with astounding resolution. They have hurled themselves against fortress positions, and by sheer courage have smashed their way through houses alive with machine-gun fire through trenches dug between concrete forts, through tunnels under red brick ruins, sometimes too strong to be touched by shell-fire and through walls loopholed for rifle-fire and hid-ing-machine-gun emplacements designed to enfilade the Canadian line of advance. Through the suburbs of St. Laurent, St. Theodore, and St. Emilie, to the north and west of Lens, J they have fought' past high slag heaps j and pit heads, along railway embankments, and down sunken roads, until they have broken a route through frightful defences to the western , streets of the inner city. |

SIX GERMAN DIVISIONS, have attacked them in turn, and have been shattered against them. These are the 7th and Sth, the 4th Guards Division, the 11th Reserve, the 220th and the Ist Guards Reserve Division. In addition to these six divisions, some portions, at any rate, df the 185th Division and of the 36th Reserve Division have been engaged. The total German strength used at Lens must well exceed .50 battalions, and 'the German losses may perhaps be estimated at between 12,000 to 15,000 men. The Canadians themselves have been hard pressed at times, but have endured the exhaustion of a greatstruggle with amazing strength of spirit, grimly and fiercely resolved to hold their gains, unless overwhelmed by numbers, in their advanced positions, as it has sometimes happened to them. But it is no wonder that some of the men whom I met coming out of that city of blood and death looted like men who had suffered to the last limit of mental and bodily resistance. Their faces were haggard and drawn. Their eyes were heavy. Their skin was grey as burnt ash. Some of them walked like drunken men, drunk with sheer fatigue, and as soon as they had reached ; their journey's end some of them sat under the walls of a mining'- village, with their chalky helmets tilted back, drugged by the need of sleep, but too tired even for that. "I'm darned tired," said a young officer. "It was the hell of a fight. We fought to a finish, ana? when we had no more bombs of our own we picked up Heine's bombs and used those" —the Canadians call their enemy Heine and not Fritz—" Heine was at least three times as strong as : us, and we gave him hell. It was hand- I to-hand fighting—riflesj bombs, bayO- J nets, butt ends, any old way of killing a man, and we killed a lot. But he broke our left flank, and things were bloody in the centre. He had one of Ms strong points there, and swept us with machine-gun fire, My fellows went straight for it, and a lot of them got wiped out. But we got on top of it and through the wire, and held the trench beyond until Heine came down with swarms, of bombers." An older officer described how. two battalions met the enemy in No Man's Land.

While the battalion on the left was : heavily engaged fighting with rifles, and bombs until their ammunition gave out and then with bayonets and buttends, the battalion on the right was working southward and eastward of the northern outskirts, of Lens. One house in the latter region, into which a party of Canadians forced, their way was a, big arsenal. Its cellars were erommed with shelled and piled boxes of bombs .In other cellars were dead bodies and the stench of corruption mingled with the stale vapour of gas. -Down in one of these vaults a young Canadian soldier stayed with his officer who was badly wounded, and could not leave him, but waited until night, when he carried the officer back to safety.