SURPRISE FOR ENEMY.

Taihape Daily Times, 14 September 1918, Page 5

SURPRISE FOR ENEMY.

STRENGTH OF AUSTRALIANS HARASSING THE RETREAT. LONDON, August 29, Referring to the manner in whicli the Germans corrupted the text of General Monash’s order to the Australian Corps on the eve of the great offensive, Mr Keith Murdoch says:— The Frankfurter Zeitlung said: This proud corps is now shattered and its morale must be broken owing to these false promises. tWe have nothing further to fear from the exhausted Australians. This propaganda, intended for homo and neutral consumption, reacted strangely upon the German troops. The commanders, thinking the Australians exhausted, jammed their lines full of troops. Prisoners say that they were told that only weak attack were to be expected, and, as a result, the Germans were surprised and and confused, and large numbers were captured.

It is wonderful how ineffective on. the whole is the enemy’s shellfire, though it is incessant and widespread. Yesterday the casualties from shells were only a dozen, though thousands of shells fell in our sector, mostly perpendicularly, showing that they were fired from extreme range. The German keep a few guns at close quarters but these are easily observable. When the Queenslanders got to the left of Vans Wood, above Suzanne, four field guna were manhandled from the wood. Our Lewis gunners took toll of the crows. The Germans still have large numbers of infantry along this front, and streams could be seen crossing the long slopes behind Vaux Wood.' The Victorians claim to have killed a hundred during a neat little engagement above Suzanne, when 500 Germans ran from a small copse between the village and Yaux Wood.

There is extraordinarily heavy gasshelling along the sector south of the Somme, indicating that the Germans arc firing off their stocks prior to a further retreat. The South Australians elsewhere found a hot breakfast prepared in a village, hastily evacuated on their approach. They scorned the German food, which was unsavoury and thin.

Eemarkablc ..performances were put up by our transport, hot meals and tea being supplied to the front lines! nightly. Every- village has been systematically emptied- by the the furniture ■ and bedding removed* and the surrounding crops garnered, mere battered walls being left. The Germans are, on the whole, fighting hard, and preventing us from doing more than harass their retirement, but they arc. undoubtedly feeling the loss of the storm troops, for which they milked their other divisions. Those divisions are lower in morale than the German troops have ever before been.