AUSTRALIAN MAN HUNTERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 June 1917, Page 9

AUSTRALIAN MAN HUNTERS.

—■ ■♦■—■ '■ — DKCIDKD FATE OF BULLKCOURT. London, May 16. M. Tudesq, writing in the Paris Journal, pays one of the roost striking of the French tributes to the bravery of the Australians who captured Bullecourt. The assault, he said, was launched at 4 o'clock on Saturday morning. The English attacked the north-east and the' Australians the south-west. It -was a daring and perilous manoeuvre, the attackers risking shooting each other in the fury of the struggle and the uncertain light. The English met with desperate resistance, the Germans bringing but flying machine-gun sections, (which temporarily broke the force of the first waves. The assault was resumed, and one by one tie advanced posts were enveloped and reduced. The enemy fought with the fury of despair. The melee was long and murderous, proof of which was provided by the fact that every German in this sector died on the spot. South-westward the "Australian man-hunters," as they call themselves, attacked with handgrenades. Advancing with great kanga-roo-like hounds, they smashed magnificently through the front line of machinegunners, and, running to the communication trenches, started to smoke out the dugouts. With bombs they drove the enemy from the innermost recesses. The assault was so swift and spirited that almost the first rush reached the open space where there were two sunken roadways leading to the village. They met here an entire German company emerging from a communication trench, where they had been massed for /a counterattack. There was a fresh, terrifying cloud-burst of grenades, and 80 men lay dead. The remainder—lsß—surrendered without striking a blow.

The Anzae onrush iwas the decisive point of the attack. (

At 8 o'clock the entire village waa in the hands of the British, who, once in possession of ruinejL houses and redoubts extended their/gains to the first plateau, and established themselves along an are fronting -the second Hindenburg line at a distance of HO yards from the enemy. Two feeble counter-attacks at night demonstrated the extreme exhaustion of the enemy. Mr. Percival Phillips (Daily Express) describes the ruins of Bullccourfc village as a charnel-house, where Germans lie dead in heaps, where corpses are pulverised, and where a life passes every second.

•Mr. Beach Thomas (Daily Mail) writes:—"We are suffering a handicap necessary to all advances. The Germans retired to prepared positions in unsullied country to fight under the protection of guns deeply dug among chosen concealments. Our .gunners hurry forward guns on >the very heels of the infantry over pocked ground, foul with the carcases of animals and the litter of wagons. As soon as the guns are in their nc'W berths the gunners must fire them without rest, night or day. Daily the gunners aro performing miracles of sleepless endurance. Tt is doubtful if gunners ever befort toiled harder or defied danger on so wide a scale. All ranks of the infantry wen J into ecstacies of admiration for th'e gunners, who help,ed to win Saturday's battle. By virtue of their pluck, and energy of the highest form, with a handicap against them, they outshot the German artillery."-