A MAMMOTH FIGHT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 14286, 1 May 1917, Page 3

A MAMMOTH FIGHT.

GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION.

[By Philip Gibbs. — Received by Mail.]

War C'oiTespondents' Headquarters, Monday, April 9. — Via London, April 10.

To-day at dawn our armies began a battle which, if fate has any kindne&s for the world, may be the beginning of the last great battles of the war. Our troops attacked on a. wide front between Lens and St. Quentin, including the Vimy Ridge, that great grim hUI which dominates the plain of Douai aaid the coal fields of Lens, and the German positions around Arras.

In spite of bad fortune in weather at the beginning of the day, so bad that there was no visibility for the airmen and our men had ito struggle forward in a heavy rainstorm, the first attack has been successful and the enemy has lost much ground, falling back in retreat to strong rearguard lines, where he is now fighting desperately. The line of our attack covers a front of some twelve milos southwards from Givenchy-en-Gahelle and is a sledge hammer blow threatening to break the northern end of the TTindenburg line, already menaced around St.. Quentin. .

HOPED TO ESCAPE. As soon as the enemy was forced to retreat from the country east of Bapaume and Peronne, in order to escape a decisive blow on tha-t line, he hurried, up divi-s-oiis and guns northwards to counter onr attack thers, while he prepared a new line of defence known a. s the southern part of .the Hindenbnrg line which joins it and is known as the Siegfried position after two great heroes of old German mythology. He hoped to escape the^ before our new attack was ready, but we have been too quick for him and his own plans were frustrated.

So to-day began anotlier titanic conflict which the world will hold its breath to watch, because of all tthat hangs upon it. I have seen the fury of .this beginning, and all the sky is "on fire with it. Tt is the most tragicand frightful sight that man ha s ever seen. With an infernal splendour beyond words, the bombardment which went before the infantry assault .lasted several days and reached a great .height yesterday. When coming from the south I saw it for the first time, those of us who knew what would happen to-day— the beginning of another series of battles greater perhaps then the struggle of the Somme — found ourselves yesterday filled with tense, restless emotion. • . . ■ ■

BELLS WERE RINGING. Nome of us smiled with a <kind of tragic irony because it was Easter Sunday. In the little villages behind the battle lines the bells of the French churches were ringing gladly because the Lord had risen, and on altar steps priests were reciting the splendid words of faith •:.. "Resurrexi at adhuc tecum sum, alleluia," (I have arisen and I am with thee always, Hallelujah.) The earth was glad 1 yesterday. For the first time this year, the sun had a touch of warmth in it, though patches of snow still stayed white under the shelter of the banks — and the sky was blue, and the light glinted on the wet tree trunks and in the furrows of the new ploughed earth. As I went up the road to the battle lines I passed a battalion of bur men who are fighting to-day, standing in a hollow square with bowed heads while a chaplain conducted Easter services. It was Easter Sunday but no trace of God. '

It was Hell in Arras;, though Easter ■Sunday. The -enemy- was flinging high explosives into the city, .and clouds of shrapnel burst about the place NOTABLE FIGURE. All around the country, too. shells were exploded in an aimless way. There was one figure in this landscape of war which made some of the officers abouit me.la-ug'h. He was a French ploughman, who upholds the, tradition of war. Zola saw him in 1870 and I had seen him on the edge of 'sinojiher battlefield. , Here ho was again, driving a pair of sturdy horses and He plough across a sloping fiold, not a furlong from a village where, Herman shells were raising a rosy cloud of brick dust. So he gave praise to the Lord on Easter morning and prepared the harvests which shall be gathered after the war.

All behind the front of the battle was &■ preat traffic and all that modern warfare means in organisation' and prenartion of an enormous operation was here in movement. I hadi just come from our outpost lines down south, from the scenes of that great da«?ert which the enemy has left in the wake of his retreat east of Bapatune and Peronne, nnd that open warfare -with village fiphtincr. where small bodies of our infantry ind cavalry had been clearing the count.i*vside of rear-giiard posts. Here, r ound about, Arras, was A concentration for the old form of battle attack upon entrenched positions, fortified hills and <?om'o great natural fortresses defended bv masses as before the batjtles of the Somme.