LEAP FROM THE SOME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16968, 30 September 1918, Page 5

LEAP FROM THE SOME.

AN AMAZING SPECTACTX

DETERMINED AUSTRALIANS.

LONDON, Sept. 6. . The enemy is shelling Pennine, and espet eially the citadel, which resembles the , bush of everlasting fire, writes Mr. Keith , Murdoch, Australian correspondent. Our . line, however, is so scattered and cleverly [ hidden in narrow and isolated trenches , and outposts that our casualties are few, but bursts of shellfire In what are called , " area shoots" sometimes make the earth , shake. The Germans hold a strong force ! on the naked slopes north-east and southeast of Pennine, while a thick garrison remains in Flamicourt, a southern suburb, and Doingt, a big, commanding village in the Somme bend, just south of the city. An unusual incident is recorded by Victorian troops. After tue rugged fighting for Mont St. Qucntin some of our wounded were left in the enemy's hands. Next day, advancing, we found them with their wounds bound, and water and food alongside, carefully tended in a dugout, with a note stating that it had been impossible to convey them to hospital, but that the utmost had been done for them on the battlefield. The New South Wales troops found close to the citadel a" party of four" survivors of 12 gallant men under a Newcastle officer. They had reached the limits of the advance on Sunday, and had maintained themselves without food or water for 24 hours, with two Lewis-gunners, fighting off the Germans, who five times attacked. Once a German reached the doorway of the house, and was killed, there, but the post remained intact to welcome our advance on Monday. The worst trial of these men was the sleepless .vigilance necessary to detect and defeat the enemy movements against them. Sept. a. The Australian front literally leapt forward from the Somme, furnishing an amazing spectacle; patrols and then companies rapidly working their way up the bare slopes east of the Somme bend, with the galloping gun teams amid the shellbursts and the field-grey Germans disappearing, sometimes in columns of fours, along roads leading through tho woods on the horizon. There was stubborn fighting, particularly for the Somme crossing at Brie St. Christ and Gizancourt. The Victorians reached Doingt, a farming village of 400 bouses, within three hours of the warning that the enemy was off. He fought here, with the result that there was hard bombing work and some street fighting, our men taking 73 prisoners. The latter, including some depressed Bavarians, who are bitterly blaming the Prussians, agree that a general retirement is proceeding to the Hindenburg line. A captured map 1 shows that this is of enormous strength, i but the prisoners are not optimistic about the German chances of holding it, owing ! to the weakness in numbers and the warweariness, the ill-training of the men, and the successes of the Third Army. The Broken Fortress of Poronne. Immediately the Germans moved off here the Australian batteries throw a , four-mile curtain of white smoke in perj fleet alignment across the slopes, thus hiding our advance and preventing the enemy rearguards from sniping or using I their machine-guns on our determined ' men. Peronne is clean now, though a few I dead still lie in the streets. The citadel looks a mere crater, the Germans' last act being to blow up a great mine beneath it. The enemy packed up so tidily at. Flamicourt that our pioneers merely had to sweep a Few bricks away and bury a few dead when they passed* through. A sad sight was the remains of one of our stretcher parties, all four having been killed by a shell while on their work of mercy. " An intense, melancholy broods over the moated fortress. One sees little tracks round tl\e pools of water in tho moat, and little heaps of Australian and German dead where the foes met in hand-to-hand rights. Hero a dead German officer who had lost his leg continued to fight on the stump. The 150 prisoners taken in an early stage of the retreat bring the Australians' total since August 8 to 390 officers and 15,543 men. It is harder getting prisoners now than ever. The rearguards 'appear to be picked gunners, 10 men I from each company. Many of them are fighting to the death, but others are de- . I camping when about to be surrounded. Our brave and skilled veterans advance up the valleys, and then deploy, out- ; flanking and pinching out the positions. The Lewis-gunners are especially daring, getting a raking fire going on each side, . while, with kangaroo darts, the other hunters advance. Vast Numbers in the Battle. i Sept. 9. One of the greatest problems confront- ' ing Hindenburg is to restore the confi- , dence of the German against the tanks. |, We could have dine perhaps all our work without tanks, bat it would have cost us ] heavy losses. An even greater debt is due to the British guns and gunners. < Except for the divisional artillery and ( 'some army brigades, all our corps artillery I is British. ' It has been a great sight to see the ( stalwart Tommies tending their guns un- , der heavy fire. The Tomny longs to ..be dashing like the Anzac, but he Is some- : times more daredevil than he thinks. For • instance, I found an English howitzer bat- ; tery cheerfully working beside an aban- '. doncd German dump'of various gas shells j —lethal, mustard, and weeping. A single ] enemy shell during a spasm of intense ] counter-battery firing would have released . the murderous fumes of these poisons. The numbers engaged in this vast ] battle cannot be exactly stated, but the staff estimates that 1,260,000 German , bayonets are available, while General von ) Ar'denne, the German military critic, computes the number of Foch's French and British divisions between the Yser and ] the Aisne as 120, with 16 American divisions. He admits that 32 American divi- J sions are now prepared for fighting, and the number is steadily increasing. 1 Meanwhile civilians are returning this . week in special trains to Amiens, and a great service will be held to-morrow in ] the cathedral to celebrate the safety of j the city, which, as the British generously ( admit, the Australians saved.