HOW THE GERMANS WERE CLEARED OUT OF EAUCOURT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16355, 9 October 1916, Page 7

HOW THE GERMANS WERE CLEARED OUT OF EAUCOURT

THREE TERRIBLE DAYS IN THE VAULTS OF A MONASTERY

SPLENDID SPIRIT OF SOAKED AND WEARY SOLDIERS. Australian »nd N.Z. Cable. (Received 5.5 p.m.) LONDON. Oct. 6. Mr. Philip Gibbs tells a grim story of the capture of the monastery in Eaucourt l'Abbaye after three days and nights of terrifying doings in deep-vault'ed crypts and cellars, which the heaviest British explosives were unable to reach. The Britishers followed the Germans into the vaults and f-night with bombs, which filled the caverns with strange lights, loosened the massive stones, and smashed the ancient pillars. Scores of bodies still lie in pools of blood in the depths of the vaults. An even stranger sight was two tanks which crawled over the trenches crushing the Germans.

At an early stage, the British attack was checked at a double line of trenches in front of the monastery. The tanks enabled the infantry to pass the trenches and through the ruins of the monastery, and to dig a new ditch on the northern side. A storm of rain swamped the ditch, and the ground behind became a quagmire for a mile. The carriers of food and ammunition were bogged, ancj, it was impossible to get supplies to the little body of men in the abbey. Their dangerously isolated position would have been desperate, but the Germans themselves had lost heart.. They were as wet and hungry as our men, and they decided to retreat. Only a few snipers and machine-gunners stayed. A party of Germans who surrendered, under an officer, came to the abbey and told this story.^ Later, German reserves arrived with a new supply of bombs, and attacked the Britishers in the abbey. We had the disadvantage owing to the accidental explosion of a dumr> of bombs, leaving the Britishers with only what they carried on ...dir bodies. A dogged fight continued for two days, amid heavy rainstorms. The Britishers desperately clung to the waterlogged holes. The fighters were wet to the skin, covered with mud, and utterly weary. The wounded were in a tragic plight, but the fighting spirit was unquenched throughout. The hottest fighting continued underground. Finally "we cleared up Eaucourt I'Abbaye." The technical phrase has an ugly significance. It means there was not a single German in the abbey vaults except the bodies of the dead.

If the ghosts of the old monks walk, who once came blinking down with horn lanthorns to fetch the abbot's wine, they would see British soldiers covered with mud cleaning their rifles and binding up wounds, chatting cheerfully of the fight that is over.