FRENCH CAPTURE STRONG POINTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 April 1917, Page 5

FRENCH CAPTURE STRONG POINTS.

FURIOUS COUNTKR-ATTAOKS BROKEN. 17,000 PRISONERS AND 75 GUNS. Received April 10, 11 ij p.m. London, April lfl. A' French communique states: "We captured nineteen guns, including live liowit/.r-rs. Smith of Laflaux, our troops, covered by divisional cavalry, broke up (lie enemy and captured Manteuil-en-Pospo. Finally, south of the Aisne, in a spirited attack, we captured the bridgehead between the Conde Valley and the whole of the Vailly. An important unit was surrounded in the forest at Ville Alibis and laid down its arms, totalling thirteen hundred prisoners. The Germans in the afternoon furiously counter-attacked with two divisions between Juvincourt mid the Aisne. Our barrages and machine-gun fire shattered the attack and inflicted sanguinary losses on the enemy, who was nowhere ablq to approach the lines. East of Courcy the Russian brigade crowned its successes by capturing a fortified work, taking prisoners. We took twenty-four heavy field guns, three and five inchers, each with a thousand rounds, and immediately employed theiil ( against the enemy. We reduced several centres of resistance, and captured strong points in the Champagne, where we took twenty guns, including eight heavy. The number of unwounded prisoners taken since the opening of the battle exceeds 17,000 and 73 machine guns, GROUND GAINED. STEADY PROGRESS Received April 19, 7.20 p.m. London, April 18. Sir Douglas Haig reports as follows: We gained ground in the night time on the left bank of the Scarpe, eastward of Fampouz, and captured this morning a further portion on the front line system south-east of Loos. DAUNTLESS AIRMEN. • INVALUABLE SERVICES. , Received April 19, 11.25 p.m. London, April 19. A headquarters correspondent writes: Our airmen crossed the German line daily, in all over four l\undred times, since the battle of Arras, making deliberate reconnaissances of long-distance raids, arid importantly contributing to our victory. We captured at least. 230 guns out of GbO on the front attacked. GERMAN LOSSES. IN iIIGHT DAYS. Received April 20, 1.30 a.m. Paris, April 19. It is estimated that the Germans on the West front lost 100,000 men in eight days. THE POUNDED TROCHES. CELLS FOR LUNATIC GERMANS. (By Wm. Philip Simms, of United Press.) With the British Armies in France, Marcli 0. One reason why the Germans retreated along the Ancre was because they were fast becoming a garrison of gibbering lunatics. Their position had become more hideous than the scuppers of hell. Mud, bottomless in places, and the ceaseless pounding of the British guns, had turned their positions into stench-pits, too horrible for human nerves to stand. The United Press correspondent was the first American permitted to penetrate. across the ground evacuated by the Germans as far as Thilloy, toward Bapaume. Madame Tussaud's waxworks chamber of horrors was as cheerful as a May day compared with this field of terrors, painfully pictured at each step. 1 1 zig-zagged around stagnant cesspools and interlocking shell cratcr3, in which the" water was the exact colour of blood. This might nave been due to chemicals in the high explosives which rent the holes, or to the nature of the ground itself. I found myself stepping on German bodies which littered the' region. They were in all imaginable conditions and positions—sometimes piled several deep. I saw arms sticking full length out of the mud that concealed all else of the bodies to which they were attached. There were legs, feet, half bodies, or heads alone protruding. Some lay face down, some were prone on their backs, exactly as if asleep. PILES OF GERMAN DEAD. At another place, on a pile several deep, lay a boyish officer, fair as a girl, with his arms thrown back and his blue eyes staring to the sky. His sandy hair had been brushed back modishly by the rain. Imagine scenes like this covering miles. Imagine every trace of vegetation long since blasted away. Imagine the earth powder-stained and churned up from ten to sixty feet deep in depth. Imagine mud so bottomless that the German prisoners claim their men frequently were swallowed up whole in attempting to cross after dark. This is the territory the Germans left. The German prisoners told us that communication trenches had been wiped out by the incessant British fire and the mud, so that relief and revictualling was difficult, most dangerous. Men on such missions were caught by the British machine-guns sweeping in the darkness, and could not be saved. It was impossible to save them thus cut off by the destruction of the communication trenches. The dead were left whero they fell. Two attacks in November left scores of dead Germans outside the trenches. Jtliejr liava remained thye until now,,