GERMANS AT STANDSTILL ON SECOND LINE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 51, 29 February 1916, Page 5

GERMANS AT STANDSTILL ON SECOND LINE.

ENFILADED BY THE FRENCH TRENCH BATTERIES. STREAMS CHOKED WITH BODIES OF THE DEAD. GERMANS NOW CLAIM 15,000 UNWOUNDED PRISONERS. LONDON, February 28. The "Daily Mail'e Paris correspondent says the Crown Prince is at a standstill on the second line of the French positions before Verdun, from Champ Neuville to Bczon Vaux. The edge of the Woevre Plain and the hilly ridges of the Meuse heights, where the Germans are endeavouring to advance, are seamed with ravines and watercourses. Amid these French trench batteries enfiladed the enemy. The carnage has been terrible. The German corpses in many places form dams across the ravines, impeding watercourses. Occasionally the dams yield, and the reddened stream swirls on, carrying away hundreds of corpses. The French are sending up troops, munition trains and battery after battery, realising that victory will be to the army making the best use of artillery. The consumption of shells is exceeding all estimates. A German communique states:—"Five French attacks in an attempt to recapture Douaumont were repulsed with sanguinary enemy losses. We captured Champ Neuville and Talon Hill, and fought a way to the neighbourhood of the southern border of the wood north-east of Bras. Our troops eastward of Douaumont stormed the fortifications of Haudrmont. Our front on the Woevre plain is advancing against the Lorraine hills. The unwounded French prisoners now total 15,000." A French official message emphasises the false claims of the German communiques. It affirms thai the total number of French captured by the Germans is less than 5,000.