STORIES OF THE BATTLES.

Taihape Daily Times, 19 April 1918, Page 3

STORIES OF THE BATTLES.

AUSTRALIANS BARRING THE ENEMY ADVANCE. Commonwealth. Official Correspondent. • - J4 K ‘ ' LONDON, April 10. Yesterday evening news came in of a further sharp fight on a part of the front where the Australians arc barring the German advance. It was the enterprise purely of two Australian company commanders. Their troops had been fighting five days at a point where the line of this new battle happens to coincide with certain over-grown, hoary-headed, an- i cient trenches belonging to the frontline the year before last. In this halfforgotten, broken-down maze the Australians had been bombing the Germans spasmodically during nearly the whole week, pushing down the halfremembered communication trenches, and sniping such enemy parties as hopped over the shallow places in saps or broken ground. The Germans came on, about a battalion strong, twelve waves one after the other. No one knows how many survived. Australian machine-guns and ! rifles swept the Germans bravely coming on till the attack withered out, 300 yards away. The Germans tried again next day the same plan with a smaller force. Again the attack was shattered. Then the Australians began daily to seize portions of the old trench, and cut off the parties ensconced in them. The fighting in some ways was a mild repetition of the old Somme trench fighting. Yesterday the two Australian company commanders saw a chance of nipping off between them a considerable portion of the German trench. They arranged to work together, and rushed over about 200 yards of No Man’s Land. Germans, in trying to get out, were cut down by Lewis guns, with guns were captured, These Germans guns were captured. These Germany had.just been collected, when we saw 1 men flit out from the withered grey trees shattered in three years’ fighting, with the dead forests and the russet brown heath of the old battlefield in the background. Their pockets were full of loot, picked up from the British huts and camps near JB'apaume, where the side-fighting has been heavy They belonged to many different divisions. The Germans evidently have much mixed up in the later stages of the advance. The Australian losses so far certainly are not one-tenth of those of the Germans opposed to them there. The best and oldest of their , comrades, the New Zealanders, further increased their already splendid reputation by making a sudden and sharp advance in order to capture a certain desired position. The affair was finished in seven minutes. The New Zealanders 110 machine-guns. The Australians are all in splendid spirit.