STEEL MAMMOTHS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 864, 16 November 1916, Page 6

STEEL MAMMOTHS.

WORK OF THE "TANKS." SOME STRANGE STORIES. THE ENEMY BAFFLED. [Special Correspondent of the New York "EYeningr Post."l British Front in France, September 27, Midnight, via London, September 28, 5.30 a.m. In the lull which has occurred after the great two days' battle in which five villages and 5040 prisoners were taken by the Allies, the correspondent of the Associated Press has had an opportunity to glean many stories from the participants- in the struggle. These stories were not only of courage and heroism, but of a humour and paradox only in such complicated and remorseless warfare. The most wonderful of all the tales told was perhaps that of one of the tanks, or new armoured motor cars, which started for Berlin on its own account. This monstrous land ship, ambling and rumbling along, did not wait on the infantry after the taking of Gueudecourt, but plodded over shell holes and across lots looking for its prey like some prehistoriclizard. In course of time it found a German trench, but as it engaged the occupants with its machine gun, it ran out of gasolene. When the Germans found this strange creature, with its steel hide impenetrable to bullets, stalled, curiosity and a desire for revenge was a fillip to their courage. They went after it with the avidity of prehistoric man stalking a wounded mammoth whose bulk was fast in one of the alleys of the cave-dwellers. No such game was ever seen on this western front, marked as it has been by all kinds of bizarre fighting. Looking for Its Yitals.

According to the account given by the British officers with veracious solemnity, while the tank's machine guns blazed right and left some of the Germans managed to creep along the trenches under the forelegs and hindlegs of the crouching beast. Then they swarmed over it looking for an opening through which to strike at its vitals. They fired their rifles into joints and bombed it all over, but to no more avail than burglars trying to reach the inside of a battleship turret with a jimmy. All the while the tank's machine guns kept busy at the human targets in reach while its crew, chosen daredevils, concluded to stick until they starved or the Germans found the proper can opener to get them out.

Finally the British infantry in the rear, seeing the tank in distress, refused to wait on any general's orders that they should remain at the objective which they had gained. They were out to save that impounded tank, and with a cheer they rushed the Germans and overwhelmed them. When the crew heard the laughing and shouting in English they opened the door and called out: "We are all right if you will only get us some more juice so that the old girl can have a guzzle of her proper drink and we can take the road again."

So the infantry formed a line in front of the tank determined to defend her to the last ma-n, while a runner was hurried back for a can of gasolene. The gasolene arrived safely, and the beast, having taken a swallow, ambled back into reserve amidst wild cheering. It left behind 250 dead Germans, according to its commander.

At Thiepval. Another lank which did well in this light assisted in the taking of Thiepval. There was once a chateau in Thiepval. The cellar is still there, roofed by the remains of the dwelling, bricks, stone, and mortar in a thick shell of pounded debris which protected it from penetration by even nine and twelve-inch high explosives. Here the Germans waited, smoking their mild cigars and drinking soda water which was brought up through shellproof underground tunnels while the ruins over their heads were belaboured vainly by the British artillery. They had the sense of security of an early Kansas settler when he went below and closed his cellar door during a cyclone. Of course, they had a machine-gun ready to welcome the British infantry instantly when the British bombardment stopped. When that gun began rattling Mr Thomas Atkins took cover and considered ways and means of silencing it. His meditations were interrupted by the appearance of a tank which, with elephantine deliberation, lumbered across trenches, and, dipping its vertebrated ponderosity in and out of the shell holes, made a quick finish of the cellar and its occupants. Taking of Thiepval. The taking of Thiepval and the Zollern redoubt, which lies between it and Courcelette, was a wonderful business. Thiepval was held by the 180 th German Regiment, which had been there for a long time. According to prisoners, the defenders had fortified the commanding ridge with

an amazing scries of ramified tunnels and dug-outs. They had dug into the ehalky earth with beaver-like industry until they were safe under a shell fire which would have turned a fort like Maubeuge or Liege or any other of the pre-war type into the jumbled grave of its garrison. The men of the 180 th asked permission to remain in Thiepval, giving their word that it would never be taken from them, and the German army commander consented.

Not only at this village, but all along the ridge upon which hangs the whole Anglo-French movement, was the same maze of warrens where the Germans lived with all the comforts of home. The 180 th had cudgelled its brains to make Thiepval the very last word in this kind of defence. It was this sort of preparation which stopped the British attack on July 1. Then, as the British infantry charged after the artillery bombardment, the Germans popped out of their hiding places with machine guns and swept the lines of khaki with their deadly spray. Bit by bit since July 1 the British have worked their way forward. Yesterday, when they went after Thiepval anil the Zollern redoubt, the British soldiers, as one of the captured Germans said, were at the doors of the dugouts almost as soon as the last shell of the preliminary bombardment had burst. A hurricane of shellfire kept the Germans in their burrows, and when it had lifted the British had arrived.

Though the Germans in many dugouts where their galleries of escape were closed surrendered in bodies, in other instances they kept the faith that the Hundred and Eightieth would die before it ever surrendered Thiepval. All of yesterday the British were prying for the entrances to dugouts in the blackened ruins of the town amid the stench of all kinds of explosives, as well as gas and lachrymatory shells. There was sporadic hand-to-hand fighting, and at intervals Germans appeared from the bowels of the earth with their hands up and surrendered to the British soldiers, who were smoking cigars found in the German dug-outs.

Britisher Trapped and Slain. An example of what persistent digI ging will do in the extension of eel* 1 Jars of buildings is given by Mouquet Farm, which the British took on the 15th. They blew in the mouth to all the entrances of dugouts that they could find, and had advanced their line well beyond the farm when a British officer saw two Germans standing on a sort of slag heap close to his side. They beckoned to him, and he thought that they were prisoners left behind by their escort, but as he went towards chem one shot him dead. Both then disappear* ed in the earth. Later on other Germans came to the surface and began firing into the backs of a party of British pioneers, who promptly dropped their shovels and took after the burrowers. When the pioneers returned after a fierce underground melee, they brought with them as prisoners an officer and fifty men. It is supposed that the Germans here had found the forgotten tunnels of a mediaeval monastery and added auxiliary ones to suit their own purposes.

All observers agree that of lato the Germans, when left in isolated strong points with orders to hold fsvst to the death, are less inclined than formerly to obey their instructions to. the letter. An officer of the Second Prussian Guards reserve division, who was captured yesterday was in a state of exceptional disgust, and expressed himself freely. "We get no support from our artillery," he said. "The British had double our number of guns and three times as many aeroplanes, while our aviators seemed to have lost their nerve. My battalion was always put in the worst possible position. Some of my men, who were given Rexa automatic rifles, threw them down without waiting to fire when the British charged. Machine-gun squads and last-ditch parties are left to stick in face of the British guns and British charges, with the assurance that if they stick it out a counterattack will rescue them. But the counter-attacks fail to materialise, as they did at first. I gave inr I had had enough." However, the officers of the British staff spoke of this man in their dispassionate way as a man with a grievance, and paid a tribute to the stubborn bravery of the Germans in the Zollern redoubt, where he was taken.