FRENCH STORM POSITION.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 72, 25 March 1915, Page 6

FRENCH STORM POSITION.

» THRILLING STORY OF VICTORY GERMANS LIKE WHIPPED DOGS. (Times and Sydney Sun Services.) LONDON. March 19. A dispatch to the London " Morning Post," dated March 9, supplies a striking description of the important French victory at Combres. North-east of St. Mihiel, the message states, the Germans were clinging desperately to the remaining strongholds, and their position was becoming more precarious as the French flanking attacks were pushed home, or new dominating positions were carried. The French had to face, at certain places, advanced German positions and salients, where, owing to the configuration of the country, it was inadvisable, and, perhaps, impossible, to dislodge them by a frontal attack. At one of these salients the advance came to something in the nature of a blind wall, near St. Mihiel, where they were faced by the winding Meuse, with impregnable earthworks on the further bank, and hemmed in by powerful fortifications on the hills commanding the town on either hand, which, if they could not shell the Germans at St. Mihiel, owing to the extreme steepness of the hills surrounding i the narrow valley, at all events could j prevent them from spreading in any | direction. ■ What appears to be the most serious menace to the German advanced position at St. Mihiel, the dispatch says, comes at present from the western hase of the angle, at Fresnes and Woevre. The country down the east side of the wedge is so difficult as to render attacking operations very doubtful of success. But if the base were broken the same Tesult would be attained on the western flank. Behind Fresnes lie the forest heights of A-rabionville, which, thanks to some of the most brilliant fighting in the campaign, are now in our possession. The Crete de Combres, as it is called, is in reality a plateau. The top is not veyr broad, and descends pretty abruptly to a broad plain. Woevre rises, though not so steeply, from the valley in which Les Eparges lies. The hillsides there present a series of small cliffs, which, in the final assault, had to be scaled with the aid of ladders, in the same way as a fortress. This operation was preceded by some of the most thorough and expensive sapping seen in the war. Mines had been dug practically through the hills. . When the final explosion occurred, heralding the infantry attack, the light was obscured by a tremendous upheaval, as though from a volcano. At the same time the ground was being prepared by heavy fire from batteries concealed in the forest heights, which swept the German positions with an inferno of shells. Reply to them was difficult because the French guns were concealed in splendid cover in the valley below. On the way up the storming parties passejj trench after trench. As a testimony to the effectiveness of the French projectiles the narrow trenches, which had been packed with men. were now filled with dead. Was it any wonder that those who escaped were demoralised? Prisoners were taken wholesale. An officer, when forced to surrender with a considerable body of men. exclaimed bitterly: "What is a man to do with whipped dogs like these?" A low estimate of the German losses, when the Crete de Combres was carried, the dispatch concludes, is 4.000.