ALLIES' POSITION IN FLANDERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3197, 23 June 1915, Page 23

ALLIES' POSITION IN FLANDERS.

PARIS, June 21. The villages north of Arras have been reduced to jumbled heaps of brick and mortar, tinge chasms lined with sandbags twist through the streets,, while machine guns are hidden under cupolas ef armoured steel and blockhouses of sandbags with armoured plate. The enemy has burrowed so deep that the bombardment has lost much of its efficiency. Attacks are sustained by showers of hand grenades and short but furiously determined infantry rushes, combined with patient rounding up of the enemy overlooked in the first dash and who attempt to continue the fight from the inner recess of the trench maze. The French have nicknamed the Buval position “ Hell’s Mouth.” It is sheltered by a ravine on the southeast flank. Lorette is a natural stronghold, bristling with subterranean forts and redoubts. The French invested three sides, and then an avalanche of metal prepared the-way for an attack. Two sides pressed on until the forces converged. The Germans fought with the ferocity of cornered rats, but owing to the steadily narrowing area of fire their machine guns wiped out many of their own men. In places the Germans took cover behind piles of their own dead. The French, now swarming up the rugged western slopes of Hill 119, which is directly south-east of Souchez, soon obliged the enemy to abandon the fortress which they were defending. On the road from Levin to Lens the slowness of the progress has given the Germans time to prepare a strong second line of defence. Givenchy Brickfield and Hill 140, east of the Neuville-Givenchy road, are recent battles proving the value of aerial torpedoes, which the French are able to regulate with great accuracy. GERMAN REINFORCEMENTS. ROTTERDAM, June 21. It is understood that Germany is calling cut a further 4000 young men, first-class material, mostly railway workers.