LENS AND YPRES

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 47, 24 August 1917, Page 7

LENS AND YPRES

EXCEPTIONAL GERMAN GUNFIRE

MILL 70 MUST BE REW.ON OR LENS LOST

(BBDTER's TELEGRAM;}

' LONDON, ?,3rd August. Reuters correspondent at Headquarters says:—"The ferocious battle »« Viued throughout yesterday round Lens. The Canadians »re holding their ion the western fringe of the city, but north of the railway the situation i*

not cleat, owing to the sway of the great fight. The German artillery fire is the heaviest yet experienced. The First Prussian Guards Reserve Division are the latest troops to be thrown in to try and relieve the situation. It is mainly a soldiers' battle. Methods of frightfillness are impossible owing to the possibility of endangering one!s own people equally with their adversaries. Few prisoners are taken. It looks as if the Huns realise that they- must retake Hill 70 or abandon Lens." SEVERE FIGHTING AT ST. JULIEN (AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) ■ LONDON, 23rd August. Mr. Phillip Gibbs states that severe fighting is proceeding eastward of St. Julien, and extending southward across Zonnebeke to beyond the Frezenberg Redoubt, while our right has again penetrated Glencorse Copse, where the enemy is defending strongly. The Canadians are still heavily engaged at Lens, checking violent counterattacks, of which there have been at°leaßt twenty. Never have the Canadians been so hard pressed by the enemy. The enemy has massed many/new troops and guns for the- defence of Lens.'but the Canadians will not loose their grip till they have strangled it. -' '

[Zonnebeke is on the Ypres-Roulers railway, five mjles from Ypres; and Frezenberg about a mile to the eastward of it.] '