VANQUISHED BY ARMY OF MERE SPORTSMEN

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 243, 11 October 1916, Page 5

VANQUISHED BY ARMY OF MERE SPORTSMEN

JOURNALISFS OBSERVATIONS OF GERMAN WOUNDED.

KNOW THAT THEY HATE MET A SUPERIOR FORCE.

(Received 8.55 a.m.)

LiWPDOJT, October 10. * ilr. Curtin, the American correspondent who. recently visited Germany, continuing to recount his experiences, says that the police" cleared the streets when wounded Pruesian Guards arriTed at Potedam. By subterfuge Mr. Curtin witnessed successive trainloads of nearly seven hundred wounded each. They were evacuated into long rows of mammoth vans and other vehicles. There were endless tiers of stretchers and a small army of doctors and nurses. Many of the sufferers were horribly manned and battered. These were the remnant of five reserve regiments bloodily smashed up in endeavouring to retake Contalmaison from the British. During subsequent days more trainloads arrived, a large proportion containing permanent invalids and cripples, while several vehicles were filled with the corpses of men who had expired on the journey. The terrible eight would never pass from his memory. It gives the lie to the German official assertion that 90 per cent of the wounded would return to the firing line.

The most impressive feature -eras the ghastly hopelessness of the white faces of the wounded, plainly revealing thet the men knew that Germany's fighting machine had met a superior force and had been vanquished by an army of "mere sportsmen." The Prussian Guards were flung at Gontalmaison because it is a vital point in the defences .of Bapaumc and Peronne. The wounded say that the Guards, although heavily reinforced, were twice driven back after the bloodiest hand-to-hand encounters.