GERMANS AGAIN DEFEATED.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17111, 12 October 1917, Page 5

GERMANS AGAIN DEFEATED.

ENEMY SEVERELY PUNISHED.

BRITISH SPRING A COMPLETE SURPRISE.

A THRILLING STORY.

Mr Pevcival Philip . reports .—The JJourth German Army was defeated again m battle. It was another un(liialiiied success. Prisoners are surrendering in iarge .numbers. ,We again caught German divisions in the process ot relief and punished them severely. The rain and mud made the enemy believe that another, enterprise was impossible. It was v complex surprise. Our. troops fought in swamps and pools, and were sometimes buried by shells, but the unquenchable spirit ot victory carred them through Bom* .marched for nearly 12 hours just before going into battle, yet they fought like lions. The attack was less a great battle than a great re-adjustment of tpe battle front. There were two simultaneous advances. The larger operation was the swinging forward or our left towards Passehendaele village, thereby easing the salient of vhioh Broodseinde was the pronounced point. I This involved the capture of the remainder of Poelcapelle village and an advance among the wilderness of ruin ed farms on the western spurst of Passchendaele Ridge, in the direction of Houthulst Forest.. On the right bat-tle-front we straightened our erratic line around Ileutelbeek and Polderhoek Chateau. The fighting between Poelcapelle and Houthulst was handicapped by marshes caused by shellfire shooting away the banks of the Broenbeek Stream. The country here is a sheet oi: stagnant yellow water, and a long irregular slope, slippery - with ooze, beyond the cut is the shattered embankment of the Thorout railway and Langemarck Road, all Kberally planted with enemy redoubts, the Thorout railway embankment giving coyer to machineguns and a number of pill-boxes had been placed in the railway station. Here we caught two German divisions relieving ea/eli other. One had been ■hurried from the Argonne in motorabuses and thrust into the forest during the night. The troops they relieved had been lying in the rain and mud since the last attack, and a great number of the men were ill. - These battalions were *o anxious to get away that they failed to give necessary in- r formation to the Argonne division. The latterr knew nothing about the disposition of the British opposite. The men surviving the barrage surrendersd immediately. Our first and second objectives were gained qn time, and by S o'clock the troops from the British Isles and another island cl the Empire were breakfasting among the vanquished redoubts. Here tihey rested for a time before going to their final goaL The Germans evacuated some pill-boxes as our men came up. The Germans admitted they liad been badly pounded with Stokes mortars.

The French, on the British left, suffered even more from the mud, but were splendidly protected by their own artillery. Stiff lighting occurred at Poelcapelle. The Germans occupied the eastern half of the ruins, also the remains of a, brewery on the Westcomsbeke Road, just clear of the village. The Germans had strengthened the cellars of the village since Thursday, when we nalted on the crossroads. This convinced the German regimental commander that he had still a fighting chance of turning us out, but before dawn the Germans had been chased out of the cellars and the outskirts of the village. They ran along the broken street and re-assembled Tt the brewery. /Here machine-guns filled the iiperiures of the sand-bagged brewery walls, und stubborn fighting followed throughout the morning, but-t-he English troops early in the afternoon gained a foothold in the brewery, which was finally captured and the garrison killed or prisoner ed.