ON THE WESTERN FRONT.

Taihape Daily Times, 26 October 1918, Page 6

ON THE WESTERN FRONT.

FIGHT FOR NOYON.

STORY OR CITYfS RECAPTURE.

Tlie recapture of Noyon by the French -was characterised by most furious fighting. In narrating the operations the special correspondent of the Morning Post says the struggle can only be described as awful. He writes:

The work of storming the city was entrusted to one of the most famous divisions of the French Army, whose three flags are adorned with the Cross of the Legion of Honour. This division fought in 1915 in Champagne, figured no fewer than eight times, and every where with added glory in the tremendous struggles for Verdun, was all through the batle of the Somme and the 12 months' long battle which tore the Chemin dcs Dames out of German hands. It was this incomparable division whicli started at nightfall to reduce the outlying suburbs of the city the plan being, first, to capture the suburbs and then to surround Hoy on itself.

■ With the Zouaves on each wing and African troops in the centre, the division passed the night in position along the railway just on the outskirts of the city. When day broke, after a terrific bombardment lasting half an hour, the eager French troops dashed forward at half-past five o’clock to the assault.

The Germans had constructed a large number of bastions filled with machine guns and small cannon, and many of these were still intact, so that it ■was not till half an hour later that the Zouaves were able to penetrate the stress of the outlying suburbs, The struggle which ensued was perhaps the fierest the war has seen. The Germans ; &ad received orders to fight to the las?: mah, and tkey obyed devotedly. They fought .behind each stone and from each doorway and window. No quarter was ashed and hone given on either side. Most of the fighting was with the bayonet and rifle butt, and the men continued to struggle ferociously after being brought down with the bayonet, until they were overcomewith the heavier end of the rifle. Where there was no room to use the bayonet the antagonists threw away their rifles and fought with bare hands their feet and their teeth.

Every house was the scene of a fur- j ious struggle, where men wrestled in | pools of r blood and yielded only | when death compelled them. The few prisoners who were secured went to the rear, still trembling in every limb from the frightful ordeal they had passed through All agreed in describing the struggle as simply infernal in its mad ferocity. In less than a quarter of an hour the Zouaves had the upper hand and the suburbs were ours. By a series of simultaneous assaults the- city was completely surrounded, and all that remained was to gather up the prisoners remaining in the captured town*-.