THE WESTERN OFFENSIVE.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 14139, 15 July 1916, Page 5

THE WESTERN OFFENSIVE.

ARTILLERY AND INFANTRY FIGHTING.

FUTILE RAIDS AGAINST THE

BRITISH.

BATTLE OF THE WOODS,

HOTTEST FIGHTING AT CONTAL-

MAISON.

TERRIBLE STRUGGLE AT MAMETZ

(Australian and N.Z. Cable Association)

London, July 13. Sir Douglas Haig reports that artillery duels and fighting continued in certain sectors. Enemy raids west of Wytschaete and south of La Bassee Canal were driven off. Aerial activity continues despite the unfavourable weather. German attacks on our reconnoitring aeroplanes over the German lines were driven off. One British plane is nussing. Mr Philip Gibbs, the "Daily Chronicles correspondent, says the battle of the woods raged round Contalmaison. Its chief characteristic was our determined efforts to take and hold copses and small forests between the first and' second German lines. The success at Contalmaison was largely due to the progress of the attacks on the woods on the right and left, nicknamed Bailiff Wood and Pearl Abbey. Our attacking columns stumbled on with rifles, bombs and machine guns, covered with muddy slime. Both j luck and weather were against these j gallant battalions. Despite the enfilading machine gun fire from Bailiff and Mametz Woods, they penetrated deep into Contalmaison, but were compelled to withdraw uritiL supplementary ntacks gave them an opportunity to complete the occupation. Mametz Wood became a place of terror on Monday. The Germans were crouching in the gnarled roots with bombs and machine guns. Our guns barraging waves of high explosives swept them forward, the infantry following in short sharp rushes. Some in their eagerness advanced over-far. That night was a night that they may well look back on through a lifetime in wonderment that the dawn came. A general says that the infantry attack went across magnificently, and within two hours ocupied the whole of Contalmaison. Fierce hatred was displayed in the hand-to-hand fighting. We killed two hundred Germans who refused to surrender.