NEW GERMAN OUTRAGE.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 February 1918, Page 3

NEW GERMAN OUTRAGE.

TRAP FOR RED CROSS. HOW PASSCHENDAELE GARRISON RAN IN TERROR. Since the fighting on October 30-31 comparative quiet prevailed on the main battle front. Shelling on both sides, however, has been almost continuously heavy, the enemy in particular, besides shrapnel and high explosives of all sizes, using great quantities of lachrymatory, mustard, and other gas shells (wrote the Daily News correspondent in 'France on *ovember 4).

More than once recently I have referred to the difficulty of getting in the wov.nded from these dreadful battlefields, and told how the Germans ia various way.s take advantage of our humanity and the respect we. show for all Red Cross work. They have invented a new trick. The men in our forward position hear an apparently English voice crying, "Stretcher bearer, stretcher bearer," from somewhere out in the waste. The patrol goes out in the direction of the sound, and when a little distance away from our lines is fired on by German snipers or machine-guns from shell holes.

Tn contrast to this is a letter found on a (German prisoner, datcti September '2B, which road: "Our stretcher bearers are now on the roads and bringing in the wounded. They carry the Red Cross flag, and can go up to the f.ont line unmolested. The English even let the ambulance drive up without firing,'' TOLD BY GERMAN >D T VRIST. An even more unpleasant story is unfolded in a diary which we bave captured of men of the Lan-hveiir iDivision. Less than two miles behind the German front li'ie, in the flooded area beyond the Yser, nearly due east from Pervyse, on the front, is a. little village called f.ohc. Naturally, as it is far within the shelled |ulius, it has long'been evacuated by civilians.

\o\v, in this diary wo find: "Fifty young women and girls have been wnrtcing on concrete dug-outs at Leke. It is in the zone of fire, and was shelled no longer ago than yesterday. It is a shameless deed, which cannot be surpassed even in the imagination. It is all simply incredible." » But how does the German diarist know that this 'shameless deed" is being done ? The diary tells uss "It is mv duty to take »the gang of forty-seven women to Leke every morning and bring them hack in the evening." PA9SCHEXPAELK "COUNTER. 'ATTACK." I have already commented on the extraordinary statement of a recent German communique that in the fighting of October 30 the village of Passchen* 1 daelc was ai one time lost (when we iad never attacked it), but was subsequently recovered by gallant counter-attacks. I referred to the fact that some of our patrols who pushed out beyond our line reported that Passchendaele had been evacuated, and opined that panic had seized the enemy there. We now kr.ew from German sources that this was true. The German garrison of the village simply ran from it in terror, but when we showed no sign of occupying the place they were most gallantly made to go hack again by troops which were in reserve for counter-attack. So there really was a sort of after all. But it was delivered against their own men, who Tan away, and not against the hated English, who did not bappea to he there.