LEAPING FORWARD.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 14712, 18 September 1918, Page 9

LEAPING FORWARD.

HEADQXfMTEVIS SHIFTS t>Allff\ INNOCUSU| ENEMY SHELLFmE.

. , . . (By Keith Murdoch.) . Australiare—Headquarters, . Sept. 3. The last- '.i ew days have seen vanguard fighting similar to that which set m 011 T- the Sorame early m 1917. The Au.straliifli. front . advances on an average 2000 yards daily, strong patrols easily keeping touch with the -retiring Boche. It is wonderful how ineffective on the whole is th& shellfire, though it is incessant and widespread. 1 .Yesterday the casualties from shells were only a. dozen, .though thousands of shells fell m pur. sector, 'mostly perpendicularly, showing that they were fired* from extreme range. , The Germans keep a few guns at close quarters, but these are easily^ observable. When the Queehslanders got -to the left of -Varix Wood, above Suzanne, four field guns, were manhandled from tlie wood. Our Lewis gunners took toll of the crews. .'"The Germans still have large numbers of infantry along the front, and jstreams could be seen crossing the long .•slopes behind ,Vaux Wood. ■ The Victorians claim •to have killed a "hundred during a neat little engagement above Suzannej when 500 RocHes ran from a small copse between the village and Vaux Wood.' j ; The vNew South Wales troops have reached the western: edge of Doihpierre, 'six miles', from Peronrie. There is extraordinarily heavy gas shelling along the sector sputh of • the Somme, indicating that the' Germans ' are 1 firing off their stocks prior to retreat. The Sou^il /Australians elsewhere found a hot l>reakfast prepared m a village, hastily .evacuated on their approach. • They scorned the German food, which was unsavory-, and thin. Remarkable performances were put up by our transport, hot meals and tea being supplied to the front lines nightly- ' . Every village has been systematical^ emptied by the Germans, the furniture and . bedding removed, and the surrounding crops garnered, mere battered walls being' left;

The Germans are now, oil the whole, fighting hard, and preventing us from doing <more than harass their' retirement, .but they are undoubtedly feeling the loss of the storm troops, for which they milked their other divisions. These divisions are lower m morale than the German troops lixi.ve.ever before been. •'' '