TERRIBLE SLAUGHTER.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 April 1917, Page 5

TERRIBLE SLAUGHTER.

OF PRUSSIAN GUARDS. A BLACK DAY FOR GERMANY. Received April 17.. 10.30 p.m. ' London, April 10. Mi- Philip Gibbs gives further vivid details of the Australian success at Lagnicourt, and describes one or the bloodiest episodes m a long tale of slaughter. The enemy before daybreak heavily attacked in masses and achieved a brief success against the Australians, and, charging in waves, the Prussian Grants drove a deep wedge intn our positions The.. Australian staff officers swiftly prepared a counter blow, and at 7.30 a.m. companies of Australians,, with irresistible spirit swept forward, forcing the Prussians to retreat obliquely, panicstricken and under a shower of shrapnel, resulting in the greatest disaster, because they were cut off by their own broad, lielts of entanglements. The most appalling slaughter followed. Corpses were piled upon corpses in long lines on a tangled mass of spiked wire. The cries of the 'wounded, long tragic wails, rose high above the roar of rifle-fire and bursting shrapnel. The Australians, quiet and grim, shot continuously, until over 1500 German corpses lay before the position. Dire fate has followed the Prussian Guards throughout the war, but this massacre is the worst episode in their history, and will be remembered in Germany as a black and fearful thing.