FRENCH SPIRIT TRIUMPHS.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1917, Page 6

FRENCH SPIRIT TRIUMPHS.

CHEMIST DES DAMES RIDGE. ATTACK BY HfCKED TROOPS. The frantic German attacks along the Chemin des Dames suggest that the enemy feels that the sword of Damocles is hanging above his head, wrote Mr. H. Warner Allen from the French front, on July 8. He is afraid of the impending offensive on the Western front, and although he is well aware that he has no hope of recovering the general initiative of the operations, he has set himself to score a,t least a moral success against the French.

I have just returned from an observation post commanding., at a distance of a few hundred yards, a view over yester • day's battlefield on the Chemin des Dames, between the fort of La Malmaison and Les Bovettes. To reach this point we passed through a green ravine in which hundreds of fresh, gaping brown shell holes proved the violence of yesterday's bombardment. Then, after struggling over a shell-torn desert, where German shells continued to fall fitfully, we plunged into the bowels of the earth, into one of the countless quarries with which the Chemin des Dames ridge and its spurse are riddled. For many hundred yards we Btumbled along under* ground, with 40 feet of rock above us, and in an absolute silence that made it impossible to realise that shells were bursting on the slopes above us. Wa* seemed a thousand miles away. The quarry was just as it had been when the workmen left it at the outbreak of war. After a long journey we reached a shaft that opened on the outer world with a crazy ladder.

RUINED FORT OF LA MALMAISON. At the top one was at once in a world of noise and war. Shells were bursting on the slopes all round, and the ground was a wilderness of shell craters. It was almost as desolate as the slopes ot Douaumont. The fort of La Malraaison is a ruin. It has been shelled by the French for months,*and great breaches are visible in its walls. Yet it still commands all this part of the Chemin des Dames, and from its ruined pile the enemy can overlook every movement of the French, except on the slopes away from it, at the edge of the ridge. The attack was admirably planned. Saturday night had been comparatively calm. Suddenly, at 3.30 a.m., the Germans opened a terrific bombardment with every gun and trench mortar at their disposal. They had used the same man-: oeuvre a few days back at Craonne, and on that occasion the infantry did not go over the parapet until a quarter of an hour after the beginning of the bombardment, and the French seventy-fives had opened a barrage that shattered the attack. On this occasion there was no waiting. The German infantry rushed forward with the German barrage, and reached the French trench before a warning had been given. ,F. very thing seemed to be on their side. The picked and specially trained shock troops of the army engaged had been reinforced by shock battalions from a neighboring army, and behind them came the regular infantry provided with trench mortars, machine-guns,, entrenching tools, barbed wire, and everything required to organise the conquered ground against a counter-at'tack. They knew that a considerable proportion of the men opposed to them had been in the sector for a long spell, and reckoned that their fighting powers had been considerably reduced. Moreover, they were certain, with something between ten'and twelve battalion* of fresh, troops, to outnumber the men opposed to them.

TRENCH INFANTRYMEN'S DASH. But they reckoned without the dash and tenacity of the French line and chasseur battalions. The artillery came to th& rescue immediately with a heavy barrage, and an insta'nt later the French returned to their front line trenches in. a splendid, counter-attack. The Germans had attacked between two storms, and the rain that had fallen had made the trenches, which had suffered heavily from the enemy guns, almost impassable. Yet the French returned to the charge, and the enemy had no time to get into position his trench guns and mortars. There followed a hand-to-hand struggle with bayonet, trench-knife, and grenade. The shock troops had met their match. In vain they tried to carry back the trench guns and mitrailleuses that they were bringing into position. A French sergeant seized the muzzle of a small swivei gun that a German was bearing off. Another German shot him down point blank, but his comrades captured the gun. With intervals the battle lasted all day long, and by nightfall the French had recovered all thei ground they had lost in the sector. Th'eir losses were heavy, but they took no |ount of them when they saw the the bodies of the German"shock troop's, half-buried in the mud.