GIANTS IN ANZAC RAIDS,

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 209, 1 September 1916, Page 6

GIANTS IN ANZAC RAIDS,

ADMIRED BY AMERICANS! (From Our Special Correspondent.)' SAN FRANCISCO, July 25. There are no soldiers in the European war more generally admired the length and breadth of America than the Australians and New Zealanders, and ardent followers of the Allied operations have read with particular zest in the United States a somewhat picturesque account sent from the British front by an American correspondent to New York regarding recent Anzac raids. This writer says: "In order to do their work slickly, the men had gone into training for it, just as one of them had trained fpr a prettier show when he rowed as No. 3 against Lcandcr. They were all tall fellows— their six-foot height would make them seem giants to the 'bantams'—and their comrades took a personal interest ia their physical condition, helping to rub them down after their morning run, and protesting against.any tendency to oversmoke. There were other exercises suitable to an occasion which in reality was a very grim business, not taken grimly beforehand by these Anzac men, who make a joke of such things until the play becomes a tragedy. "Each raid was similar in its operation. Shortly after midnight our trench mortars were turned on to the enemy's barbed wire, and cut it like beanstalks. At the same time the guns barraged the communication trenches, and put a fence of shell-fire round the positions to be at- , tacked. Then the men went forward with , bombs and truncheons. A German machine gun was hosing No Man's Land opposite one of the raiding parties, but they escaped its bullets ana ran on, and jumped down into the enemy's trenches. Then there was a terrible ten minutes for the Prussian soldiers, and, on the other section, for the Saxons. They came out of the dug-outs under their parapets and out of the. sleeping'shelters in the parados, terrified to see these Anzacs in their trenches. Some of them surrendered at once, but others tried to defend their positions with bombs. In their demoralised state many were killed by their own bombs. Others died fighting among the dead who had fallen in°the bombardment. One raiding party counted thirty corpses;"