GUNFIRE AT LENS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17124, 27 October 1917, Page 5

GUNFIRE AT LENS.

STUPENDOUS SIGHT.

Mr Perry Robinson, describing in the "Daily News" the bombardment of German defences before Lens, says, "It was a stupendous SE_2tacle. A thousand guns broke the stillness all at once, and above the deafening roar of gunfire and bursting shells the air shrieked and wailed as it was torn by projectiles overhead.

"As far as the eye could see to the right and left the whole earth flickered and twinkled with the firefly flashes of our guns.

, "Fumes of bursting shells arose almost like a solid bank, in which the stab of bursting shrapnel grew redder as a cloud thickened, and here and there dazzling white flares and signal lights arose out of the dark to hang in incandescent points against the sky.

"Suddenly another roar mingled with the clamour of guns, and lightning flashed. Flashes of bolts from the sky grew almost continuous, and the thunder rolled and crashed oveihead, mixing with and hardly distinguishable from the uproar of guns, as if the artilleries of heaven and earth strove each to outvoice the other. Then began the rain, at first slowly, then in sheets, followed by a tropical downpour, through which twin thunders of guns and sky went on and lightning flash and shell-burst flickered inextricably through the veil of water. It was an extraordinary

scene."