LATEST WAR NEWS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 24 May 1915, Page 7

LATEST WAR NEWS.

A RECENT BRITISH

ADVANCE.

DESCRIBED BY "EYEWITNESS."

GREAT EXECUTION AMONG THE ENEMY. . '

8* CABLSH?aESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT,

(Received May 24, 2 p.m.)

LONDON, May 23. "Eyewitness" describes the driving out of Germans from their entrenchments in an area between the Richbourg and Festubert salients. The British pressed on them from three sides, subjected, them to a cross fire from several directions, and to continuous bombing. The position became untenable and over three hundred surrendered.

The British joined hands and pressed the enemy further eastward, forcing them from one post after another. 'Entire groups surrendered. Meanwhile. the British in front of Festubert had progressed to a point south of that place, where they met a strong resistance, and a series of desperate hand-to-hand combats with bayonet and hand grenades followed. As the Germans were outflanked and enfiladed at many points their • lossej were very heavy. There was no room to escape from the narrow trenches and their, choire was death or surrender. A horrible sight was presented by the trenches heaped with German corpses, many blown to pieces by the initial bombardment.

The Germans on the extreme riglit were pressed back in such large numbers that they formed an excellent target for our machine guns posted north of Givenchy, which did great execution. *>

• By night time in all we held the whole of the front trenches from Festuberb to Richeboiirg. Among the strangest speotncles of the war was that of a mass of Saxon surrenderees, standing amid the dead, and dying with their hands raised, being "butchered by their own comrades before the eyes of the British.