NO OVERSEA TROOPS ENGAGED.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 14129, 4 July 1916, Page 5

NO OVERSEA TROOPS ENGAGED.

OTHER ACCOUNTS OF THE ADVANCE.

TERRIBLE HURRICANE OP

SHELLS

TRENCHES AND VILLAGES

OBLITERATED

BRILLIANT ARTILLERY WORK

(United Service.)

(Received July 3, 11.15 p.m.)

London, July 3

It is believed that no overseas troops are engaged. The chief fruits of the attack are the enemy's losses of men and morale. Nowhere was the fight sufficiently uniform to make a general summing up possible.

South of the Ancre we scored the greatest successes. Northwards the progress on the whole is greater than the map shows-, under a dreadful hurricane of shells the whole of which reached the enemy trenches. They have battered out of existence the nearer communication trenches, obliterated whole villages behind the lilies, and rendered their: untenable. Woods have "been swept laway a-s if a forest fire had raged through them.

Thiepval has been converted into a veritable devil's cauldron. Serre is a bowl seething with fumes, black, green and white.

The German lines during the past four days must have been a hideous nightmare.

The French advance was magnificent. They went forward as if on parade, carried the first German line unchecked, and swept beyond.

At the order to advance the British rushed into the roaring hell and worked their way to our curtain fire' ahead. The enemy's shells poured on the men, but there was no wavering, and the gaps quickly closed.

Then the curtain fire subsequently jumped like a jerky cinema film, rose and fell on another trench further on, leaving nothing but desolation in front of our a en. Everything was flattened out, and the men leaped across the;< ruined trenches towards the wall of smoke and fire.

The drama was repeated again and again. The men approached the curtain, saw it lift, and fall further on. Cmx gunners' range was perfect.

In the cyclone of, fire it was impossible to give spoken commands and everything was communicated by gesture. A dense bod;/ of Germans, appro-ach-ed, and it looked like a counter-attack. Our artillery ceased fire, and'we. knew that these were surrenderee. We slit their boot laces and cut off their brace buttons, and the Germans, with their hands-in their pockets, slouched rearward, needing few to guard them.

The German general must also have been surprised at his local counter-at-? tack turning into a procession of prisoners. He ordered the artillery to fire, and many of the prisoners fell.

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[Press Association —Cotttbight.]

We found many Germans who had been stricken down while praying. Some had prayer books in their hands.

Many of the trenches were an impassable shambles, groans coming from wounded buried beneath tho piles of dead.