NOTICE BOARDS OF YPRES.

Taihape Daily Times, 31 July 1918, Page 7

NOTICE BOARDS OF YPRES.

The fate of Ypres is overtaking Arras, which is now regularly bombarded, There is o touch of farce (writes Mr. Hamilton Fyfe) la the notice boards which still hang on some of tli e ruined buildings. Upon what was once an hotel opposite the station, but is now simply four broken walls, there still appears the announcement, “Chambers pour volageurs.” “Passage intordit aux voitures” (closed to wheel traffic) applied to a railway crossing that has three years’ grass growing over it is equally comical, especially in a place where not a voiture is to be seen. More pathetic is the public appeal on the once pleasant boulevard — “Trees make your city beautiful, take care of them.” An ironic note in that, when so many of the trees lie about split or rooted up by the shells, GERMAN MACHINES RAMMED. GOOD WORK OP AMERICAN AIRMEN. The service that American airmen will be able to render the Allies’ cause is revealed by a study of work done on their own front. They have so reduced the enemy’s activities that daily calls for help on one chaser headquarters have decreased from fifty-four to one. They have also accounted for three times as many enemy casualties as they themselves have suffered, counting only planes actually reported or observed to have been destroyed. Two of these successes were almost miraculous cases of ramming. The German airmen emit a dense cloud of smoke, to give the impression of a machine on fire dropping rapidly, as though out of control. Deceived at first by this strategem, the Americans now follow the smoking plane to ensure its destruction. In these two instances the German planes, having nosedived some two thousand feet, straightened very abruptly, with the consequence that the American pursuers, whirling blindly downwards through the smoke, craslied unawares into the tails of their opponents, most fortunately sending them in rum to the earth, with only trifling injuries 1 to their own machines.