GERMANS NO NEARER VERDUN

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 52, 1 March 1916, Page 5

GERMANS NO NEARER VERDUN

ELEVEN HUNDRED MEN MISSING

HELD UP FOR THREE DAYS

ATTACK DEVELOPING TO EASTWARD

FRENCH AUXILIARY CRUISER SUNK

For nine days the Germans have been fiercely striving to break the French line at Verdun, but for nine days has the steel wall of French bayonets and guns hurled them back. In the first six days, by sheer weight of numbers and inconceivable sacrifices, they forced the French line back for four miles, but for the last three days their forces have been stationary', and on the strong line which the French have now established the utmost fury of the German crack regiments has been spent in vain. Now it is believed that the attack has passed its maximum, and that the enemy, foiled in his great objective, is atempting a diversion by attacks from the angle of his St. Mihiel salient upon the French line in the Woevre. After fierce artillery preparation he captured one village to the south-east of Verdun, but the counter-attack expelled him from the greater part of the area won. All accounts agree that the German losses have been enormous, an Amsterdam estimate placing the number of dead at 45,000, while 1 endless trainloads of wounded are bearing their freight into the German base hospitals. Caught in massed formation by the seventy-fives and heavier guns, the Germans were mown down* by the hundred, and on one front of two miles it is estimated that 8,000 lay dead at one time. The French auxiliary cruiser Provence, a vessel of nearly 4,000 tons, has been sunk in the Mediterranean, and eleven hundred of the eighteen hundred men on board are missing. Nearly seven hundred men have already been landed. No periscope was seen either before or after the disaster, neither was the track of a torpedo observed. Giving evidence at the inquest on the victims of the sinking of the Malqja, the chief officer gave4t aa hi& opinion that the steamer had been torpedoed.