BAYONET BATTLES

Evening Star, Issue 16463, 29 June 1917, Page 2

BAYONET BATTLES

-PRUSSIAN GUARDS GIVE WAY BEFORE COLD STEEL. Pushing their way along the , lower spurs of the Vimy Ridge, the Canadians fought a violent bayonet action. The enemy, _ writes Mr W. Beach Thomas, threw in a first-clas3 Prussian regiment of Grenadier Guards to hold a little hill scornfully known as the Pimple. The Canadians, unsated by three days' deadly fighting, dashed into the assault, and a hot bayonet fight developod. One soldier, whose bayonet caught and twisted in the green uniform, felt the German's point in his thigh, and, in the passion of the. moment, dropped his own weapon, seized the German's, and at one effort wrenched it from his own flesh and out of the German's hand, finally felling the German with the butt end of the rifle? Such spirit was irresistible, and the remnant of the Prussian Guard gavo way, leaving the majority of the garrison dead. On the eve of the battle two or our men, prisoners with the enemy, escaped to our lines. The story of these men will fill our Army with more fury than anything yet recorded against the enemy. They are men captured early in the yeai', and were at once set to work near the lines, sometimes under our shell fire. They were starved from the beginning; one who was 13st when captured is now Bst. One has a gangrenous foot, and the other is covered with boils. If they asked to cease work because of their weakness they wero lashed with a whip or hit with the butt end of a rifle. On the way from the front I saw 2,000 prisoners. Among them, were a considerable number of artillerywho separated themselves and drew off into the corner of the collecting " cago." Our officers thought at first they were proud; the truth was, as they themselves confessed, they were afraid—afraid that their-own infantvy would mob them because they had fired so badly in the battle—and the fear was justified. The infantry were furious against all the artillery—the trench artillery as woll as the others—because it had fired short, hitting its own men, fired late, fixed wild, and sometimos not fired at all. Our artillery had knocked all the heart out of them. One or two wero crazy, and the''whole group had to be kept separate and protected by our men when finally the long procession moved away.