FRENCH PROGRESS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7914, 4 August 1917, Page 3

FRENCH PROGRESS.

We are awaiting their efforts m calm confidence. The battle was a signal triumph for the gunners and the infantry. It was tin- first great battle ol the war entirely without the assistance of aeroplane observation, but venturesome aviators played a new part. They flew low through the dense mist and engaged the German machine gun redoubts, and silenced many strong points, thus becoming a cavalry of the air. Some intrepid pilots dropped so low that the wings of their machines nearly brushed the concrete forts, while their machine guns were raking the surrounding trenches. It has been a laborious day for the gunners, bringing their batteries forward oyer flooded roads. A dismal drizzle continued all day long.

RAIN HAMPERS OPERATIONS. LONDON, August 2. The “Daily Chronicle’s” correspondent at French headquarters in Flanders says:—The French array is fighting in the sector between Noordschote and Boesinghe. It is difficult, flat country, offering little possibility of concealment, while the inundations extend southward to the neighborhood of Ferryman’s House on the Yser. The sector is important, because pointing eastward on the left to the forest of Houthulst, a German stronghold since the autumn of 1914, and on the right to Roulers. The German first line beyond the canal is already untenable, owing to Sunday’s bombardment, and abandoned. The passage of this moderate watercourse thus proved a relatively easy proposition, and the whole of three stretches of fieldworks of the first German position were in French hands in three hours. The armies are holding the ground won, and breaking successive counterattacks. The German Staff has not yet abandoned the hope of re-capturing its lost defences.