ENEMY ADVANCE BEHIND TIMETABLE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 28 March 1918, Page 5

ENEMY ADVANCE BEHIND TIMETABLE.

DEADLY WORK BY BRITISH GUN-

NERS AND AIRMEN

LONDON, March 26. Reuters correspondent at British headquarters, in a report dated March 26, says: Very slowly, and exacting the heaviest possible toll for every foot of ground, our line continues to withdraw before the pressure of the German masses. Over a large portion of the battle zone the retirement is voluntary, and is being conducted so as to maintain an unbroken front. The weather remains fine, the ground being hard and dry, favoring the enemy bringing forward guns. Even so, the prisoners say the advance is much behind the time-table? the tenacity exceeding anything they deemed possible. Prisoners complain of great privations, owing to lack of supplies, and say. +hat extreme, weariness js telling heavily. This is doubtless true of the prisoners taken, but. thanks to his dense masses of supports, the enemy is able to constantly replenish the forward lines with fresh units. He is fighting desoeratelv hard against time.

We now know that in the first days of the fighting the enemy's reserve was reduced to 52 divisions, and by the second day to 40 divisions from the reserves which were thrown in.

Yesterday was the supreme time for our gunners, the advance being held up nearly everywhere by the ceaseless intensity of our artillery fire. The enemy's massed waves received dreadful rjunishment.

The work of our airmen surpasses praise. Yesternight they made a veritable pandemonium at every centre of concentration and on the traffic behind the German front, tens of thousands of rounds being fired into enemy formations, whose density offered a perfect target. German observation is so restricted by day that they never can do more than oeep and run. On the other hand our fliers are fulfilling, with deadly effectiveness, their role of being the eyes of the artillery. In this conation the weather is undoubtedly favoring us.