WAR NEWS BY MAIL.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7, 8 January 1917, Page 9

WAR NEWS BY MAIL.

THE NAVY AND THE PUSH.

HOW SAILORS CAPTTTRED BEATTCOTTRT.

LED BY HEROIC NEW ZEALANDER. (From Our Special Correspondent, per R.M.s. Niagara.) LONDON, November 30. The officer of the Boyal Xaval Division who gallantly led the force which captured Beaucourt in mid-November turns out to be Lieut-Colonel Bernard Cecil Freybc-rg, D.S.O- This officer, who is now lying seriously ill in London with four wounds, is only 27 years of age. He is a New Zealander by birth. He joined a battalion of the Royal Naval Division in August, 1914, and went with it to Antwerp, where his hand was badly damaged by live wires in the Belgian entanglements. Later he went to Gallipoli with his battalion, and was awarded " - D.S.O. for swimming ashore on April 24 in the Gulf of Saros and lighting fires, which made the Turks believe that a landing iraa contemplated at this point. He received numerous -wounds in Gallopoli, and was mentioned in the evacuation dispatches. He has commanded his battalion for nearly eighteen months.

In his narrative of the Beaucourt fight

Mr. Percival Phillips, of the '"'Express," speaks of the R-N.D. as ''in battle for the first time."' Some of the men concerned in the Ancre battle may have received their baptism of fire there, but many of them, like Lieutenant-Colonel Freyberg, tasted the bitters of war at Antwerp, and supped them to the full in Gallipoli. There, I believe, LieutenantColonel Freyberg received no less than fourteen wounds in two doses. Some of the R.N.D. men who were at Beaucourt have, I understand, been right through the Galiipoli campaign from start to finish, and have actually had no leave since they left the Old Country. Naturally these hardened veterans take exception to Mr. Phillips' Ignoring their pre-Beaucourt record, and describing them as being in battle foi the first time.

This is the story of the fighting on November 13 and 14, which ended in the Germans being swept from their line beyond Beaucourt, Beaucourt Hamel, and St. Pierre Divion, as told by a "Chronicle" correspondent:—

"The narrative of those days and of that fighting can never be told in full, so great is the multitude of single heroisms and obscure devotions. But no account of it, however partial and perfunctory, can omit the attack of the Naval Divi-

"The line they held, and from which they attacked, extended from the Ancre northwards to just below Beaueourt, and their objectives included mat sprawling maze of trenches and communications and machine-gun redoubts which the Germans had constructed in this section, and the village of Beaucourt-sur-Ancre itself. .ov '■ ■■>; -. -.■■■■: THE ATTACK BEGINS. 'The moment of attack came shortly before dawn on the Monday morning. The barrage went screaming over, erupting in the dimness as it tore down the great barrier of wire before the German positions. Eight feet high it stood. 40 to oOffc wide, made of finger-thick strands of spiky wire; and the barrage mowed Jt like grass- .. . Then came the moment when the fire curtain dragged forward. It was the time appointed and over went the first wave. J?t efOre i hen t'- the ground over which and towards which they had to advance luted in the middle to a ridge, with its whale-nose lying towards them, steeper on the river side than upon the north. L'pon the slope of this there was a Germau redoubt, a little fortress armed with a battery of machine guns which commanded the forward and northern slopes of the ridge. It was actually behind the German first line faring over it, and while the men of the first two battalions upon the right were able to go forward and thrust into the German line and occupy their portion of it, their comradee of the two battalions upon their left found themselves under a onTOig sleet of bullets against which no advance was possible. ATTACK HUNG UP. 'The attack was hung up on the left. •Prompt and eager, over came the reserves, to be met likewise by the storm of bullets, while upon the right the other battalions found themselves ahead of their comrades thrusting on with a naked left flank below the partial shelter of the steeper slope towards Beaucourt. Their leader, a colonel commanding one of the battalions, had been wounded once already in the first minutes of the attack, while crossing Man's Land; he was wounded again shortly after reaching the first objective. FOUR TIMES WOUNDED. "He was wounded twice more by morning; but it was he who held the attack upon the right together and carried it on till the remnants of it were slose before Beaucourt Hamel. -Here, where the German line before the village confronted him, he collected the forces within reach. Of these, still living and unwounded (or not seriously wounded) he gathered together a storm-ing-force of 250 of one battalion, 115 of another, 15 of a third, and some 50 men from the brigade on the left, who had inexplicably got round or through the machine-gun fire and joined him. that they had got through; they were separated from their own unit; they were alone and without direction—but they had gone forward towards the village still. With this force he pushed on into the German position, meeting with only slight opposition, and occupied it for the night. TANKS TO THE RESCUE. "Meanwhile, the forces held up on the slopes of the ridge saw night coming down on them, and the German redoubt still unsubdued and mowing down every attempt to go forward. Three 'Tanks' started the tame night—or rather, at 3 on the following morning. The officer who had gone for them guided them oaclv to the ground, walking in front of tliem, for a 'Tank' is a slow beast.

"One of the machines moved laboriously ir.nvard towards the redoubt, still with its walking guide, eaterpillaring its wa v up the slope. There was not a yard of the ground that had not been dug up by shells; a dozen times the -Tank' slowed up and moved on with its guide ahead, tiil he- brought it within 100 yards of the redoubt.

"Ihc German-, in tlie redoubt swung their guns on it, and watched it still come on; they s-mv it pause. They had no notion of" what the next item its procedure of exterminating them ought to be.

o ™ Th( \ crew threw open its door and emerged with their machine-gun. Their battleship lay beside them. The Germans m the redoubt waited no longer, lney could see men where before they had only seen steel plates full of hell and mystery, and they seized their occasion. They poked a hole through a machine-gun loophole with a white rag on the end of it and waved it frantically in token of surrender. BAYONET FIGHT IN RUINS. '"But while this was going on, the men who had lain out through the night before Beaueourt had not been idle. During the dark, small detachments pushing up on the right had reached them and three machine-guns had come to their aid. Even so, they were not strong; they represented nothing more than is left of an attack that has forced its way across nearly 2000 yards of fire-swept ground barred by enemy trenches- ilany of them were wounded; but at daybreak their commander, carrying his four wounds, took them forward to the village.

"While the Tank' was threatening the redoubt, these men were fighting hand-to-hand action with the bayonet among the heaped ruins of Beaucourt. The Germans who held the village stood to it well; the righting was intense. But the "sailors' and their comrades had not come that far, and in that manner, to be denied now; and just about the time when the garrison of the redoubt was tying its whitest shirt to the pole, they broke. Beaucourt was ours."

Lieut.-Col. Freyberg, who took it, had four wounds as iis reward. He was hit as he went over the parapet twenty-four hours before, and during the subsequent fighting shell splinters and bullets marked him thrice again, but, as ilr. Phillips puts it, he "carried on" with his men, leading them over the broken bricke and huddled German corpses, a strange flying figure wrapped in soiled bandages —"the liveliest casualty," as one of his petty officers put it, ''that ever boarded a German trench."