HARD FIGHTING

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9720, 24 July 1917, Page 3

HARD FIGHTING

FRENCH GAIN AND LOSS ADVANTAGE IX THE AISXE .OFFENSIVE. It is of vital importance that at the present critical stage of the opera-, tions the British Army in the fiehf and the British people at Home should ; v appreciate at their proper worth;* the results achieved by the French offensive (wrote Mr H. Varner Allen from French Headquarters on June Ist). Between April 15th and May 21th the French have taken 26,045 nnwoundod prisoners and .3/64 wounded prisoners—in all, 31,829. Those hgures, when considered with the numuer or guns and the quantity of material captured, are elo quent, hue they express only a fraction of the acnieven; . The great accomplishment of tf. trench Army has been the capture Of a senes oi enormously strong positions which enjoyed exceptional natural advantages, and had been fortified with every device that modern science could suggest- , . As is invariable in such a case, German agents m order to conceal tha failure of their army and High Command set themselves to exaggerate the cost at whicV the French successes were won. Ji ,J -/inours were spread that the French' -my had shot its bolt. These rumoais are without a shadow of foundation, as the enemy will find before long. The French Army is in splendid condition, confident in its leaders and full of determination to make the most of the success already won.

THOUSAND MEN WIPED OUT. In modern warfare it is obviously inadvisable to inform the enemy of one’s own losses, especially when he is being forced to retire and can on{y guess at the amount of damage that he has been able to inflict before he ha s been dislodged. In the course of an advance certain indications are obtained as to the enemy’s casualties, but the main estimate of the effects of an assault must be based on the number- of men the enemy has been compelled to bring into line, as the destructive power of modern artillery is such that only an estimate can be made.

To take’ a" single instance of this difficulty of computing enemy casualties; at one point on the fine, between . Soissons and Auberive, the French infantry met with unexpected resistance, and called for a supplementary artillery preparation. A number of guns of the largest calibre wore brought up, and after they had done their work 1 the infantry resumed the attack. In the advance ' the French lost 27 men and took 30 prisoners, and the progress -made gave them an idea of the enemy’s real losses. '

They found a series of shelters built of concrete and heavily protected, which had collapsed under the heavy projectiles. In their fall they toad buried six companies of Germans, wiping out about a thousand men, and inflicting on the enemy a loss of which the French had no idea until they had captured the ground.

HARD FIGHTING FOR LAFFAHS. 1 witnessed some of the hardest fighting of the offensive, so that I was able to form a personal opinion as to the moral of the French troops and tis to the losses they suffered. Thus I watched from a distance of about 1500 yards an attack on the fortified village of Laffaux. It is inevitable that on so vast a battle-front there should he ups and downs of fortune, and in. this assault the French failed in their first attempt. The enemy had concentrated on this point a very large force of artillery and i troops, wtith the result that, thougjh the French succeeded id surrounding the -village, they were unable to retain their positions. I was able to talk freely with the officers commanding with the men. There was not a sign pf discouragement, and everyone was convinced of two things: firstly, that though their casualties were heavy, they had inflicted at-least equal losses on the Germans, and secondly, that at the next attack they would carry their objective. Events proved that'theirs was no empty optimism, since not only the village was taken, but also the mill on higher ground beyond it, and, that despite the most desperate effort® of the enemy. AGAINST HEAVY ODDS.

I spent some time with one of the divisions which suffered most severely, and carried out a moat difficult task in the first days of the offensive. Tha division had lost nearly a quarter ot its effectives, hut, without being reinforced, it had engaged in five days two and a-half times as many German regiments as it contained. During that time each of' its regiments put completely out of action two German regiments, and the prisoners -taken by the division amounted to one-third of its total casualties. There was not an officer or man who had the least doubt that they had inflicted on the Germans losses three or four times greater than their own. These examples, taken from points of the front at which the French had a particularly difficult task to perform, are sufficient evidence that the French, so far from suffering losses out of proportion with the result obtained, actually succeeded in inflicting far heavier losses on an enemy strongly entrenched, supported with,abundance of artillery, and determined to fight to the last on his positions. The French Army, proudly conscious of what it has accomplished, awaits with perfect confidence the next stage of the battle, which will enable it to give concrete proof of the value of the success that it has already won.