IMMORTAL VALOR OF K.R.R.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 October 1917, Page 3

IMMORTAL VALOR OF K.R.R.

OFFICERS DIE FIGHTING BACK TO BACK.

Immortal honor was won by the King's Royal Rifles and the Northa'mptonshircs -in the coast battle which. as mentioned by Sir Douglas Haig, resulted in our line being pressed back to the Yser over a front of about 1,400 yards. This reverse of ours is not a great defeat. It is only, writes Mr. Philip Gibbs, a tragic episode of human suffering such as one must expect in war. But what is-great —great in spiritual value and heroic glory—is the way in which our men fought against overwhelming odds and under annihilating fire, and did not try to escape not think of surrender, but, held this groiihd until there was no ground, but only a zone of bloody wreckage, and still fought until most'of thein were dead or disabled. The men who did that were King's Royal Rifles and the Northampton. These men who came back from the other side of the canal came back wounded, and had to swim back. They were a remnant of those who have stayed, lying out in the chnrned-iip sand or have been carried back to German hospitals. The action began suddenly early in the morning, when the enemy concentrated a great power of artillery on our trenches and breastworks in the sands on the east side of the Yser Canal, north of Nieuport. Without these bridges there was no way back or round for holding the lines in the dunes. The enemy began early in the morning by putting a barrage down on our front line system of defences from a large number of batteries of heavy howitzers. There was one interval of a whole quarter of an hour, and officers had time to tell their men it must be a fight to the death, because the position MUST BE HELD UNTIL THE DEATH. The commanding officer of the Sixtieth became convinced 'by 3 o'clock in the afternoon that all this destructive fire was preparatory to a big attack. He saw that his bridges had gone behind him, so that there was no way of escape, and he saw that the enemy was trying to cut off all means of relief and communication. He tried to get messages through, but without success. Two shells came into his battalion headquarters, killing and wounding some of the officers and men crowded in this sandbag shelter and dugout in the dune, fi» took the survivors into a tunnel bored by the miners along the seashore, and here for a time they were able to get out to reconnoitre the situation or to give some word of comfort or courage to carry on. Flights of hostile aeroplanes were overhead, and they flew low and poured machine-gun fire at any living man who showed. There are many details of the action which may never bt known. No man saw it from other ground, and those who were across on the bank of the Yser could see very little beyond their own neighborhood of bursting shells.