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Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VII, Issue 294, 6 October 1917, Page 4

The re-opening of the British offensive on the Ypres front again emphasizes the terrific efficiency of our artillery barrage. Colenel Repington to-day makes a special point of the fact that the relative quietness in other parts of the Western front has enabled the enemy to effect at Ypres an immense concentration of men, guns and aircraft. But, granting this, there can yet be little doubt but that in the matter of guns he is greatly inferior to the British. Air. Philip Gibbs in describing the initial phase of the third battle of Ypres gives some idea of the mass of artillery that is brought to bear when an immediate advance has been decided upon. “Even some of our own men,” he writes, “were startled and stunned by the terrific blast of our gunfire. Some of them have told me that when they went forward to get into line before the attack they had to pass through mile after mile of our batteries, the heavy guns behind gradually reaching the .lighter calibres forward, until they arrived at the field guns, so thickly placed that at some points they were actually wheel to wheel. The night was dark, but there was no darkness among these batteries. Their flashes lit up their neighbourhood with lurid torches, blinding the eyes of troops on the march, and all about the air rocked with the blast of their fire, and the noise was so great that men were were deafened. As the troops went forward for five or six miles to the assembly lines flights of shells passed over their- heads in a great rush through space, and it was terrifying even to men like one of those I met to-day, who has become familiar with the noise of gunfire since the early days of Ypres and the fury of the Somme. But the worst came when the field guns began their rapid fire before yesterday’s dawn. It- was like the fire’of machine guns in its savage sweep, but instead of machine-gun bullets they were eighteen-pounder shells, and" each report from thousands of guns was a sharp ear-split-ting crack.”

Air. Gibbs then goes on to narrate the experiences and observations of fellow, who described his own adventures as he lay wounded, and told his tale as vividly as a great orator, because of the perfect truth and simplicity of each phrase. He said that he and his comrades hurried to get away from their own lines when the signal of attack came, in order to escape from that awful noise. They preferred the greater quietude of" the enemy’s positions. They went across blasted ground. It had been harrowed by the sweep of fire. Trenches had disappearedConcrete emplacements had been overturned. Breastworks had been flung like straws to the wind. The >nly men who lived were those who were huddled in sections of trench which were between the barrage lines of our fire. Our men had no fear of what the enemy could do to them. They went forward to find creatures eager to escape from this blazing hell. It was only in redoubts like the Frezenberg Redoubt, which had escaped destruction, that the German machine-gunners still nught and gave trouble. Many of the enemy must have been buried alive; witli machine-guns and trench mortars and bomb stores.

Mr. Gibbs then incidentally gives us some idea of the insidious and deadly nature of the gas which the Germans have driven us to use, just as at length, by their persistent and aimless slaughter of our women and children, they are now driving us to aerial reprisals. “But there were other dead,” he continues, “not touched by shell-fire, nor by any bullet. They had been killed by our gas attacks, which had gone before the battle. Row’s of them lay clasping their gas-masks, and had not been quick enough before the vapour of death reached them- But others, with their gas-masks on, •were dead. One of our men, tells me that he earne across the bodies of a group of German officers, a brigade staff no doubt, and they were all masked w’th the tin beast-like nozzle, and they were all stone dead. It is ths vengeance of the gods for that gas, and damnable, which they used against us first in the second battle of Ppres, and ever since. It is the worst weapon of modern warfare and has added the blackest terror to all this slaughter of men, and there can be no forgiveness for those who used it first, so cold and diabolical in their experiments of its killing powers.” Elsew’here we have been told that the. Huns, with .all their boasted scientific superiority, have failed to put to practical use any destructive gas that can penetrate the protection afforded by the ma,sks furnished to our troops. The judgment of the gods is surely against them in this as in greater things,

Space will not admit of any very lengthy reference to the great b.-ttle that is being fought for us on the fateful field of Ypres, where in effect, the destiny of the world f.»r the next century, perhaps through all the centuries to come, is being shaped in the rough by force of arms. Fortunately, however, the official and unofficial accounts that are sent to us afford between Giem so full and graphic a narrative that but little elabora; tion is needed, The matter for chief congratulation, apart from the immediate significance of so pronounced a success following so closely upon others equally definite, is the higher and still more assured note of ultimate and complete victory ' that is inspired into even the abbreviated communications that rearh us. It is noticeable even in the guarded language of Sir Douglas Haig’s self-restrained despatches and swells aut more fully in such graphic descriptions as those of Mr Philip Gibbs. There must, however,

be no false elation raised on this account, for much hard work and possible temporary reverses drill lie ahead of the Allies in many fields. The front on which this last attack has been launched extends roughly from a point on the YserAlenin road a little south-east of Gheluvelt to a point on the Ypres-Staden-Bruges railway a little north -east of Langemarck. In a straight line these points lie something over seven miles apart, and, allowing for the curved front of our new salient position now being still further accentuated, the actual battle front would probably be at least a couple of miles longer. The world has never seen such massed and concentrated forces, of human destructiveness as have here been brought to bear with such terrific effect. The fact that the enemy had himself in contemplation a heavy offensive movement anticipated by ours by a matter only of minutes seems merely to have aggravated the losses to which he had to submit. The advance has apf latently not yet quite reached the imit set for it, but the Germans are already »counter-cttacking furiously but vainly. Another day will probably see another pause in this, the greatest offensive of the Western Front. There is nothing from any of the other battle areas calling for special notice.