ENEMY'S LOSSES VERY HEAVY.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 May 1918, Page 5

ENEMY'S LOSSES VERY HEAVY.

NO INFANTRY ACTION ON TUESDAY Received May 1. 9.30 p.m. London, April 30. Sir Douglas Haig reports: —Tl'.a French prisoucred 1)1 in last night's counter-attack at I .o<:n\ Further reports confirm that the enemy s losses were very heavy in yesterday's unsuccessful attack. There was no infantry action to-day, except local fighting. Patrols brought in prisoners south of the Sommc. GERMAN CASUALTIES. TEN TIMES MORE THAN ANTICIPATED. Received May ], 5.5 p.m. Amsterdam, April 30. The Germans have requisitioned three of King Albert's palaces for use a3 hospitals. Tlio casualties in the present battle are tenfold what the authorities anticipated. THE SUPER-GUN AT WORK. Paris, April 30. The long-range gun is again bombarding Paris. ANGLO-FRENCH SUCCESSES. London, April 30. The French have recaptured Locre completely. The British have advanced east of

THE YPRES SALIENT. OUTLINE OF ITS HISTORY. SCENE OP PROLONGED AND BITTER FIGHTING. The following article, written by Mr. F. J. Sleath and issued for publication by the War Office, is of particular interest at tho present juncture, wfaen heavy fighting is again in progress over the area described: To those whose lot it was to take part in one or other of the phases of the fighting iu its neighborhood, Ypres and the surrounding district will ever be remembered as a land of mud and damp and dreariness, a death trap for the living; and one huge mausoleum of the dead. From Boisiughe in the north to Vierstraate in the south, the ground was like a sponge, kept perennially moist and sodden by the drainage from the high ground surrounding the town. The clayey nature of the surface soil prevented tho rain from percolating into the c-arth, and the Yser Canal and its continuation, the Ypres-Comines Canal, which roughly traverse the base of the salient, were always brimful and overflowing, and their sluggish current proved wholly inadequate to keep the wretched country even passably dry. From its situation, Ypres was bound to be a town among mud flats. It stands in the centre of a plain, girt oil three sides by rising country. As soon as one passes beyond it, Jean to the north, Potijze or Zillebeke to the east, and Voormezeele to the south, the ground begins to rise. Before the Wytschaete-Messines advauce, and the present fighting (last year) the Germans held all the crest of this rising ground. The British trendies were a little further down the slope. The plain itself always more or less approached the condition of a rtiorass.

STRUGGLE FOR HIGH GROUND. The possession of the high ground not only enabled the Germans to keep their trendies free from water; it gave them the additional advantage of being able to sweep the lower ground with their fire. It was thus that the salient became -a death trap. And every part of the salient out of rifle range was directly under observation from the heights immediately behind the German lines. Stretches of woodland like Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse certainly gave some cover at first. But the German gunners soon swept the landscape bare, and from the l'ilkem heights in the north, Hill CO and Wytschaete ridge, German observers could watch the whole of the country round Ypres, so that no man could move without risk of attracting German shell-tfire. Yet Ypres had a tactical importance which at once made it a point whose possession was essential to the ultimate success of British strategical plans, and an object of attainment equally desirable to the Germans. It was the great road centre of the district, and the problem of supply was thereby made simple for any army using it as a base. Indeed, the defence of the salient would have been impossible without this ready means of intercommunication, and, the efforts of the big 42cm German guns, before the second battle of Ypres, were almost entirely devoted to making the road junctions impassable with shell craters. The fact that it stood between tiie Germans and Calais rendered it an additional storm centre.

HISTORY OF THE SALIENT. j The history of the salient falls natur-! ally into three divisions. The first covered the period of the "High road to Calais" dream with the Germans as the aggressors, and lasted from October, 1914, to the early summer of 1915. Then followed something like a stalemate, punctuated by activities in which both sides were alternately the aggressors. The third coincides with the present year (1917) and sees the Germans wholly on the defensive. On October 19,1914, the Germans began their first serious attempt to break through to Calais. The Belgian. Army had just been extricated from Antwerp when the Germans hurled four army corps against the thin Allied line in front of Ypres. At the same time they attacked the Belgians at Nieuport, the British at La liassee, and the French at Arras. Any one of these points offered a ready access to Calais and the sea, and the dissipation of the German forces necessitated by this simultaneous attack was one of the greatest blunders of the war. • The French rendered gallant assistance, and in the later stages Indian troops came to the rescue and fought nobly. The great Indian leader, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, who came to visit and cheer on his beloved troops, passed away in their midst in the moment of victory. The attempt to break :through failed after frightful carnage, and the Allies vmre left m

of the line, Sti-enstraate on the canal, Langemarek, Broodseinde in front of Zonnebeke, Veklhock, and St. Eloi. The Ypres salient had come into being, April, inlfi.- ;i tli;>lii offensive effort oil l.he part u!' the British in the mining of. Hiil CO, but on May 22 the Germans inaugurated their next big aggressive effort which developed into the Second Battle of Ypres. The attack really begin on Tuesday, the 20th, when Ypres was bombarded and set on fire. But, its full horror was realised on the night of the !22nd,. when a light steady wind from the -north-east bore over the French lines the first gat; cloud of the war. The French front was crumpled up right to the canal, and the Germans poured through the breach. A four-mile gap was caused between the Canadian left in front of St. .Julien and the French on the canal, yet the Canadians held firm. Staff work was impossible, and the artillery had almost ceased to exist. But the splendid gallantry of the individual British soldier won the day. NEW '^RIGHTFULNESS." The salient had now been sadly reduced .in size, and its further history resolves itself into a. series of comparatively small attempts by both sides to improve their positions- locally. The fighting of July is interesting because it saw the introduction of Britain's new army to active trench warfare, at the same time as a further species of German "frightfulness" in the form of "liquid fire." The attack at Hooge on September 25, at the Bluff in FebruaryMarch, 191G, at St. Eloi in May, and Hooge in June, left the positions relatively unaltered, and with the opening of the Somme struggle the salient settled down into quiescence, the one side steadily preparing for the offensive, the other as steadily for the defensive. The taking of the Wytschaete-Messines Ridge saw the end of the Ypres salient and removed the harassed plain from German observation. The advance of July 31 was the natural corollary. What the future holds cannot be foretold. But no one can read the story of the first two battles of Y r pres in conjunction ' with the two last advances, without realising the full and tremendous decline which has taken place in the relative power of the German military machine.