ON THE BRITISH FRONT

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 29 September 1915, Page 7

ON THE BRITISH FRONT

PRELIMINARIES OF ATTACK

THREE DAYS' CONTINUOUS BOMBARDMENT. _____ • A CHANCE FOR KITCHENER'S ARMIES. (Received Sep. 29, 12.25 p.m.) LONDON, Sep. 28. The "Westminster Gazette's correspondent in Northern France, writing on the 23rd, says: This is the third day of a continuous British bombardment. The German fire is astonishingly light, suggesting that they are short of guns and ammunition on this front. . Looking towards the German lines there is no sign of life; even trench periscopes are not hoisted. The German infantry is lying low packed in their deepest dug-outs. The ground immediately below the surface is chalk, and the trenches of both sides appear sb dearly defined, wavy lines of parapet's glaring white in the sunshine.

The most prominent features of the country are the pithead erections, towering chimneys and huge black slag heaps. Most of the mine chimneys have been shelled down, because they were used as artillery observation stations, but the tall winding gear erections of metal lattice work 'resisted the shells.

The spectacle on the British front was wonderful * and awe-inspiring. Shells from the -heaviest artillery, resembling the spouting of geysers of flame, smoke and dust were playing upon the slag heaps at Lens \ lyddite from (the howitzers plunged into the firing and communication trenches, blowing down the parapets; and shrapnel pelted savagely the masses of hanked entanglements protecting the German lines.

The amount of wire used was stupendous. Great thickets and It-edges ran in front of every trench. The Germans were constantly adding reinforcements to the. *rusty wire with fresh tangles —blue-tinted heaps through which only shrapnel can blast a path. It -was necessary for artillery to cut many more miles of entanglements than * the actual attack required, otherwise the Germans would realise the spots selected for assault.

The British bombardment blotted ■out whole stretches of the German line in a slow moving curtain of smoke, through which could be seen the orange flame of shells. "Every heavy shell threw up an enormous' column of dust, which drifted slowly down the wind along the German front.

The bellowing thunder of the guns, the shrieks and screams of shells, and the crashes and growls of high explosives did not cease all day long, and even the darkness was broken by continual gun flashes, telling of the activity of the guns throughout the battle line.

The British have heard of the hammering the Russians have undergone, the apparent lockfast at Gallinoii. and the painfully slow progress of . Italy, and now feel that the fulcrum of the lever is back on the west front. The Germans have jeered at Kitchener's armies, but these feel' now that they have a real good chance of showing their metal alongside the remnants of Sir J. French's "contemptible little army."