WORLD'S BATTLE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 28 September 1918, Page 2

WORLD'S BATTLE

STRONGEST FORTRESSES

STORMED

•■■■■ LONDON, Sept. 4. 1 Mr Beach Thomas (Daily Mail correspodent) eay^: The attack on the VYotan Jine isVai world's battle, split into a. thousand fragments. Although pierced, and its five successive ditches captured, we have only penetrated its outer detenoes, and the enemy is still defending the line to a great depth. , We have seized the audge along which the line is dug. and a>re locking across a' narrow valley to a second ridge; where the Germams are massing every available man.

We have stormed the strongest earth .and wire fontre&s in. hustoryj and have commenced a great battle, in which the enemy 6s forced to struggle man to man, despite ,his -utmost ingenuity to avoid. such a ■oonflict. PRISONERS SCREAM AND . QUA^KE. In' a later message Mr Thomas deisonbes the subsequent advance through the breach as so impetuous and irresistible that prisoners were captured screaming and quaking with fear,''their appearance '.suggesting that the enemy is badly short of man-power. " _ Many were young, small, weak, green troops, oddly dressed, with self-made paper puttees. This was/ their first experience .in actual fighting, having been hurriedly thrown m to stop line breach. The number or prisoners seems to be legion, and they are coming in everywhere.

rhe motor machine guns' dash on the JNord Canal was a, most wonderful feat They traversed the Arras-Camhrai road, which was a corridor of death hearing ancL smoking beneath the shellnxe, as though the earth fc was in eruption. " . . •

The motors caireered along at Such a pace that they passed the shells and then the doubled and trebled defence® on* both sides of the roads, and ireached the canal, where they held up the German reinforcements. MAY DECIDE HUN HOLD ON FRANCE. / Mr Percival Phillips (Daily Express correspondent) says that fierce fighting continues among the villages we#t of Cambrai, the enemy making a supreme effort to hold -up General Home's troops, and throwing in every scrap of available material.

Divisions are bunched together indiscriminately, tired and fresh iaf&ntry, dismounted cavalry pioneers, ;and.' headquarters' clerks fighting with the energy of despair. Everywhere the German war machine shows signs of lack of discipline and determination, and the defence iis confueed and disorganised, the Hun apparently reading that on the outcome of this battle depends the duration ot£ his stay in France.