FIERCE ATTACKS BY NIGHT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 148, 17 November 1914, Page 6

FIERCE ATTACKS BY NIGHT.

SARD BAYONET WORK. 'MEN JRAOE HORSES. i A lame-corporal of the Royal Irish ,Fusiliers gives a vivid account of a night jattadk on the Aisne. lie says: "One ,night after a very hard day in the trenches when we were wet to the skin, we had lighted fires to dry our tunica, '.and were at it when wo heard firing *>, along our front, and then the Germans 'Came at us like madmen. We had to tackle them in our shirt sleeves. It was mainly bayonet work, and hard ;work at that. They were well supported by cavalry who tried to ride ua down in the dark hut we 'field out ground until reinforcements came and thehn we drove them off with a fine rusli of om- cavalry and infantry,. At one point there was a fine race between our ''battalion and one of the Lancer regiments as to which- should get at the Germans first. We wore handicapped .at first a bit because we hadn't horses, but we won in tho end, and charged ■right into the German hordes with'the bayonet. After that the lancers came up, and there wasn't much left for anybody else when the Germans were done with.

Quite tho worst sight 1 saw wig whim a big mass of French infantry were advancing to clear the front of our position, where tlie Germans had been ■rathering iu strength. They were coming along at the doublo carrying all before them, when, without the slightest warning, Gennan (batteries, posted under the shelter of a wood, opened on them with a deadly shower of shrapnel and ma-chine-gun bullets. The long advancing line scorned to contract like a frog does when yora stick a pin in it and it isn't any exaggeration to say that you could hear tho shells cutting through their closely-pacloed rawks like the scythe cuts through the grass. The men went down by the 'hundred until they opened into extended order. Then they made a rush for the position where the guns were, and, though they were attacked by both infantry and cavalry at nearly every step of the way, they ultimately silenced those guns."