GERMAN BRUTALITY AVENGED

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 214, 17 February 1915, Page 8

GERMAN BRUTALITY AVENGED

OUT OF ISOO ONLY FIVE WERE LEFT UNSOUNDED CHARGE OF BERKSHIRE REGIMENT. AND THE RESULT. London, December ]. How Gorman brutality ■\yas; avenged by the First Battalion Koyal Berkshire Regiment, is told by Lance-Corporai Winpenny, of that Regiment. He says: We had been in the trenches under shell lire for three days when the Hermans found that they could not crush us/by fair means. They drove all the women and children they could find across the danger zone and advanced behind, their cover. We should have fired by rights, but.when the commanding officer looked over his shoulder he said: "Boys, X was going to ask a question, but I can see the answer in your eyes." He added: "Thank God I am an English soldier." These were his last words, for his right shoulder was smashed to pieces a moment later by shrapnel. ■Wo waited our time, 'and the enemy were fairly caught. * The charge was given by word of mouth, and not sounded as it usually is by trumpeter. 'The strange part was that we had got close- ) up before the Germans discovered our | moveme7its, and it was too late for them Ito extend. Some fought well. Out of ISpO Germans only live were left standing and they were captured.

ARMY'S "MAD MINUTE." Almost all the attacks at "pros of late have been made at night hy the Germans, writes a cplleague who is near the front. German infantry lias been taught a new kind of advance that is as poor an imitation of. the Glnn-ka. advance as German lithographs are of <De Vinci's art. * Again and again they have wriggled forward out of their trenches one by 1 one across a hundred yards or more of grass and turnip fields towards our .'trenches until their company was assembled. Then they stood bolt upright and shouted "Hoch!" and "Deutschland über AMes!" .and charged' MW men. v Their charge usually brought them to within about 50 yards of our trendies. and then they were stopped and turned always in the. same way by the use of the greatest invention of the British army, "The mad minute." ' Our gunners can shoot and our Guards can push a charge home; every regiment can give some special account of itself; but every one admits at this time that "the mad minute" is the greatest of all the army's achievements. ) It has given rise to the legend among the Germans that every British soldier I carries a machine gun, but this is the ; truth -that in one minute every British i soldier can empty 15 rounds of ammuni- '! tion into the enemy. After his first great shout of'Deutsch- ;. land über Alios," the German always be- '. gins to pack—to get nearer and nearer I his neighbor—a foolish thing to do; I and then it starts,/find behind it the machine guns start, and 50 yards frenn the trenches the last of them turn up and run, but few get back. f "The mad minute" and tile doggedness of our men and their , officers in the trenches under shell fire alone saved Ypres and all that hangs on Ypres, and yet the enemy, with the bravery of a bandoliered bull, comes back and back to the charge, and we are wondering I will he not some time break the line.

| ' NOT A GERMAN ESCAPED. I It was Wellington who said that a little British army goes a d long way. Once again this was demonstrated the other day near Ypres. A'patrol of British cavalry were resting beside c wood, when scouts brought 'word that a company of German infantry were stationed in a field a quarter of a mils away. The cavalry men left their horses, and, taking their lances and rifles, . crept softly through the wood; to surprise the Germans. It was <*vn anxious ■journey. There was very little wind, and the crackling of twigs sounded almost like pistol shots. But the Germans were tired and their sentries were lax. "With whoops" and yells the British sud-v denly burst from the wood 1 , and a frightful melee ensued. The fighting was at such close quarters that the lances were, almost useless. _ The British' clubbed their rifles and stunned the Germans with smashing blows. The proportion of the enemy was three to one, but not a German got away. In five minutes 1 they were all disarmed and prisoners, with hardly a shot fired on either side. The British lost not a single man.