CONTINUOUS LOCAL FIGHTING ON FLANDERS LINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16837, 30 April 1918, Page 5

CONTINUOUS LOCAL FIGHTING ON FLANDERS LINE.

SPLENDID WORK OF AUSTRALIANS AT METEREN. TREMENDOUS MASSING OF GUNS ON BOTH SIDES. Timet. (Received 11.5 d id.). LONDON. April 29. Mr. H. Perry Robinson writes: No operations on a large scale have occurred during the past 48 hours, though there has been continuous fighting in the Kcmmel area, the chief centres of which were Meteren, Locre, and Voormezeele. Each changed hands more than oncc. Generally the results were in favour of us. The Australians are fighting splendidly around Meteren. Everybody is loud in their praise, while they are modest themselves. They worked their way into the very outskirts of the town, which was too strongly held and too full of machine-guns for direct attack, but the Australian parties have been scouring the neighbourhood. Cleverly working they have perceptibly pushed back the Germans along this sector of the front. Since the enemy occupied Locre the French have driven them out again and again. Apparently the Germans still partly hold it. Fighting is going on with similar oscillations at Voormezeele and also the wood to the south, where the Scotsmen, in a heavy attack, flung the enemy back. We have taken a considerable number of prisoners. Some are notably despondent concerning the offensive. Their morale is evidently bad. This varies with different units and depends on the amount of hammering they have suffered before capture. Very hard struggles in the Kemmel area a.'e still expected. New German divisions continue to arrive and a prodigious number of guns are now massed on both sides. Roads and villages in the rear are continuously shelled. The Germans shelled all the successive heights behind Mont Kemmel and the townlets beyond, and drenched the Ypres ruins with gas. It is dreadful to see new places gradually being drawn into the sphere of desolation, peaceful lands torn to b:ts, and villages pounded to dust. Meanwhile there is fierce and almost continuous fighting about Givenchy.