VERDUN SHAMBLES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3244, 17 May 1916, Page 71

VERDUN SHAMBLES.

GLASGOW MAN'S STORY OF THE FIGHTING. Graphic details of the fighting around Verdun, particularly that for the village of Vaux, are furnished by Mr James Keith, a Glasgow solicitor's clerk, serving in the French, army. Mr Keith Bays : The more I see of the terrible events of this great struggle the more do I realise the need for a new Dante to picture for posterity, a tithe of the horrors attending on the German attempts to break the French line. Everywhere there is wholesale slaughter, and it is no exaggeration to say that rivers of blood have soaked into the ploughed-up ground. At times the German attacks remind one of flocks of lambs being driven off to the slaughter, and at otfhers they are more suggestive of demented men dashing out their brains against a stone wall. For blind fury and fiendish disregard for human life the attacks on Vaux surpassed anything that has gone before. The village was strongly held, but the attacks were on a large scale. They began with the now familiar move to encircle the French position. Enemy artillery and infantry attacks converged on the village simultaneously from all points save a narrow line in our rear, by which our retreat lay in case of disaster. Clouds of Infantry.—■ The position resembled a " V," we being at the sharp-pointed bottom, and the enemy moving along the two sides. For the first attack in front of the village great clouds of infantry were pressed torward after a devastating fire that played terrible havoc in the village. Our artillery and machine gun fire was of the deadliest possible character. Every inch of ground covered by the attackers was paid for in lost lives. As far as the eye could see there were long streams of men converging on the village in massed companies at intervals of a hundred yards, and every time gaps were made in the ranks they were quickly filled by men dashing forward from the rear. Within a few hundred yards the head of the attacking columns halted some time to allow the main body to come up, and then masses of greater density swept forward for the assault. Our infantry fire had been reserved till now, and we poured into their tightly packed ranks a murderous volley, that sent them reeling backward like drunken men. The check, however, was only short. On they came again, the front ranks being kept on the move by the pressure from behind, just like a great crowd struggling to get into a football ground or a theatre. After very desperate fighting the first line trenches just outside the village were carried by storm, and the enemy concentrated on the main street, where their work was cut out for them. The few houses left standing by the tempest of shell fire had been made into forts. Machine guns were on the roofs, peeping through windows and doors, and from every possible vantage point. Everywhere the enemy turned they gazed into the face of death, and it was a hideous face indeed. The Fight in the Village.— Up the narrow street"the enemy now charged, probably unaware of the terrible ordeal that awaited them. They reached the bend. That was the signal we were waiting for. Every gun and every rifle gave tongue. The air was rent with a deafening noise. When it died down, there could be heaTd the cries and shouts and curses of myriads of men, some in their last agonies and others blindly groping for a way of escape from the inferno into which they had ..been thrust. . . . The enemy came forward again, and this time began a systematic attack on the houses occupied by our infantry and machine gunners. One by one they were surrounded by enemy detachments, and the scenes inside were terrible in the extreme. Inch by inch the enemy fought their way through the doors, up the stairs, and out on to the roofs, from which they fired down. In some houses the narrow 7 staircases were choked up with dead and dying, and the attackers did not scruple to u°e dead comrades as shields behind which to advance. Multiply these incidents manifold, and yon get a fair idea of the way the fight raged far into the night, the French, terribly outnumbered, stubbornly disputing each inch of ground, and the enemy putting forward never-ending waves of men, until the exhausted French were gradually forced out of the village into the trenches behind. The enemy now threw in their reserves with the intention of dealing our weary men a crushing blow before thev could reach the shelter of the prepared position. One French regiment was placed in nosition to hold the attackers at bay, and, well-supported by artillery and machine gun fire, they flung back attack after attack, developed with Savage fury. Each hour brought the enemy nearer to exhaustion. Ultimatelv the attack s " weakened. Finally they ceased altogether for the time boinf. Meanwhile the French were gathering their strength for the greit counter-atack that was to win back the lost ground.