WESTERN ATTACK.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 November 1917, Page 5

WESTERN ATTACK.

POST SLIGHTLY ADVANCED, artillery activity. Received Nov. 7, 1.10 a.m. London, Nov, 6. Sir Douglas tfaig reports: We slightly advanced our post south-eastward of Poelcappolle. We repulsed a bombing attack westward of Bercelaere. There has been great activitv of hostile artillery northward of the Ypres-' Roulfers railway. The activity of our artillery continues. GRINDING THE BELGIANS, HOW THE HUXS RAISE MONEY. Received Nov. 6, 8.50 p.m. Amsterdam. Nov. 5. Germany lias fined east Flanders ten million francs (fiiTO.OOO) for having failed to provide 40,000 laborers in a stated period. A GERMAN REPORT. London, Nov. 5. A wireless German official message states: We carried on powerful and destructive fire on the Yser lowland region between Houthulst Wood and the Ypres-Comines Canal, s ATTEMPT TO SECURE AMERICANS. Washington, Xov. 3. Official.—Germans on the 3rd raided the American trenches. Three Americans were killed, five wounded, and twelve captured. One wounded fierpian was taken prisoner. It is stated that the Germans first barrvird the trenches, wliieh formed a salient, cutting off a group of Americans, and a raid followed. It is believed the Germans repeated the tactics which they executed against the Australians 'and Canadians when they first occupied the front lines. FLANDERS BATTLE. ITS OPENING BEFORE DAWN. WHAT THE ONLOOKERS SAW. (From C. E. W. Bean, Official Correspondent with Australian Forces.) BRITISH HEADQUARTERS, France, August' 1. On the top of the hill at last. We •lost our track up it in the dark. The drizzle has stopped, but the night is very black. We are out in the open, -'clear of the scrub. Just half an hour to go, As we stand panting from the climb -we can see the gun flashes far below all around the wide sickle of the salient, and the white flares intermittently 'drooping. Voices came through the dark on our left. So others have climbed up here too, to watch it. A soft snore from a little way down the slope and a chuckle in the dark. Some tired chap must have thought it worth while to icome sight-seeing on the top of a day's lhard work. The guns are firing more than usual. It is not an intense bombardment, but it is one which gives no rest. Three days ago a German division retired bodily from it and had to ibe pushed in again, and the bombardment :has gone on steadily, with intervals of whirlwind fire, and often raiders behind .the whirlwind. The Germans have i since replaced their tired troops in the Jinc with entirely fresh and rested divisions. . Once a brilliant red glow expands over the sky to the north of the salient. It broadens and broadens on the under surface of the clouds, while the brilliant rosy spot on the horizon which is the cause of. it, grows a little. Then the whole reflection suddenly fades and leaves us staring into the night blacker than ever by contrast. Some small •dump of ammunition or bombs must have blown up behind the German lines. A motor is purring along the road below us. Every twenty minutes or so there is a whine and the bang as of a tin can into the woods on our left—a German gun performing its nightly programme of putting these lonely shells into a distant road crossing. THE COUNTRY OF GREAT MEMORY. Far, ever so far, away beyond the brim of the plain is the occasional flicker of the German guns, behind works which our people' have never seen, in the country which they used to know once, in the long ago times when the first British Arinv lived and fought there. There too are the faintest possible lights, pin points so tiny that you have to shut your eyes and look three or four times before you can be certain that they are not imaginary. The telescope shows them steadily burning. They must be behind the German line —I wonder if they are lights in Wervicq. or perhaps in Roubaix. There must be Germans in the cottages over there—Germans bending anxiously' over candles guttering into deal tables, with maps and message forms and telephones. One of the lights is moving iniinitesimally across the horizon —winking as it passes behind unseen obstacles — some motor-car I suppose carrying German staff officers along a road that we have not travelled since the half forgotton days when the British cavalry was out towards Menin and the 7th Division was struggling down from Belgium ■towards the unguessed terrifie struggles in which Ypreß salient took shape. There is a low grey streak of dawn below the soft monotonous grey canopy of low cloud. We can see the grey light on the shoulders of the men on the hillside below us and the red of an. occasional cigarette coming and going. The occasional dry remarks that .reach ns are in tones that one has heard, on many similar mornings—unmistakably Australian. Three out of every four of the men here must be Australians. What inveterate sightseers they are. Their division is in the line about five miles away playing :a small part in the attack—l suppose some of its units are a little nearer in billets, hut they will go any distance to see a sight like thjs one. It will be something to talk about all their lives back at home. THREE MINUTES TO GO. A few minutes ago flares started going up in showers, from the German line at one point—near Hooge. I think. White after white drooping over in sheaves.

There was a red light amongst them, and then another. The Germans had taken some alarm there. Could they 'guess.that this was the night? Their staff, of course, know of the battle and had warned the divisions to expect it any morning now between three and five o'clock. How they must have awaited thege last anxious dawns. Their 3rd Guard division is down there somewhere, which was drubbed by the Australians first at Lagnicourt and afterwards at Bullecourt. "Three minutes to go." says a voice. Tho flares near Hooge have, died down to the normal one or two. Things are very quiet with the dawn. I suppope the German is sitting back half-relieved. "Not to-day after all," he says to himself. There is scarcely a flare along the line. THE BEGINNING. A red string of glowing beads ha* suddenly lighted up along a sector of the northern horizon. "What the devil's that?" savs someone. It is like the red ragged streak of a winter sunset. It fades out. But with it the whole great plain below suddenly bursts into a city of twinkling lights. Brilliant lemon-green incandescent flashes, white electric flickers, countless yellow pinpoints—here and there splashes of brilliant light liko the distant glowing steam over a railway engine's flrebov. These last are our burning oil drums thrown from trench mortars, each drum turning over and over as it flies. Then another low string of red beads growing and fading near the point of the salient, and another in the north. Those beads must be the bursts with which the bombardment was to start. A steady, continuous drumming fills the whole sky. The battle of Flanders has begun. The German alarm signals, red and green flares, began to rise so sudden and so thick that within three minutes one could not get nwav from the idea that one was looking down upon a vast railway junction, some Clapham Junction' twenty times multiplied. And then the smoke of battle slowly rose like a morning mist and half hid the scene. Far away an ammunition dump hit by some shell exploded. Close by us a grey shape rose slowly against the paling streak of sky. It was the first observation balloon going up. It rose to the low cloud not many hundred feet overhead, and stayed there half out of the cloud canopy and half in it. The German is throwing smoke shell after sihoke shell on to the far side of Me«sincs Ridge. Along the whole horizon our gun flashes and German shell bursts show like heavy rifle Are from a ■wellfilled trench in the old Gallipoli days. It is four twenty. A group of Australian signallers pick themselves up and file off down through the fern to reach their camp in time. 1 Party after party follow —one fellow carries his bedding with him, rolled like a shearer's swag. The first bird sings. The early aeroplane hums over. Only a few British officers remain. Out there British troops must be fighting where they fought in 1914.