The Greatest Battle of the War Second Month of the Desperate Fighting in Flanders and Picardy By Philip Gibbs

Special Correspondent With the British Armies [Copyrighted in United States of America]

The May issue of Current History Magazine contained Philip Gibbs's story of the great German offensive up to April 18, 1918. At that time the Germans were seeking to break the British lines in front of Ypres, as part of their drive for Amiens and the British Channel ports, generally known as the battle of Picardy. The pages here presented are a continuation of his eyewitness narrative of the most sanguinary battle in history.

April 18.—The arrival of French troops on our northern front is the most important act that has happened during the last three or four days, and it was with deep satisfaction that we met these troops on the roads and knew that at last our poor, tired men would get support and help against their overwhelming odds.

Beside the khaki army of the British has grown very quickly an army in blue, the cornflower blue of the French poilus. They are splendid men, hard and solid fellows, who have been war-worn and weather-worn during these three and a half years past, and look the great fighting men who have gone many times into battle and know all that war can teach them in endurance and cunning and quick attack.

As they came marching up the roads to the front they were like a streaming river of blue—blue helmets and coats and blue carts and blue lorries, all blending into one tone through these April mists as they went winding over the countryside and through French market towns, where their own people waved to them, and then through the villages on the edge of the Flanders battlefields, where they waited to go into action under shell-broken walls or under hedges above which British shellfire traveled, or in fields where they made their bivouacs, and fragrant steams arose to one's nostrils as cuistots lifted the lids of stewpans and hungry men gathered around after a long march.

The attack this morning from Robecq, below St. Venant, down to Givenchy, is a serious effort to gain La BassÉe Canal and form a strong defensive flank for the enemy while he proceeds with his battles further north and also to get more elbow room from the salient in which he is narrowly wedged below Merville.

For this purpose he brought up several more divisions, including the 239th, which was in the Somme fighting of March, but not heavily engaged. This one attacked the British at Robecq and was repulsed with heavy losses. It was at a place called La Bacquerolles Farm, near Robecq, where after heavy shelling last night the enemy rushed one of the outposts at 10 o'clock. In order to facilitate the attack this morning of German divisions north and south at 4 o'clock the German guns began a heavy bombardment of the British lines as far down as Givenchy and maintained it for five hours, using large numbers of gas shells, on account of the east wind, which was in their favor.

His guns shelled the bridges across the canal in the hope of preventing the British supports going up. Then his troops came forward in waves on a wide front. They were in immense numbers as usual, with many mixed battalions. One of the British units today took prisoners from ten different regiments. There were some ten German divisions facing four British ones north of BÉthune, and all along the line the troops were much outnumbered; nevertheless, the enemy was repulsed at all but a few points of attack and beaten back bloodily.

THE GHASTLY LOSSES

In this battle one regiment of the 42d German Division has lost over 50 per cent. of its strength, and other losses are on a similar scale. These ghastly casualties have been piling up along this line between Merville and BÉthune since the 13th of this month, when the Germans made a series of small attacks as a prelude to today's battle, owing, it seems, to battalion officers taking the initiative without orders from the High Command, in order to push forward and break the British lines if they could find weakness there.

On the 13th and 14th some of the South Country troops were attacked by strong forces repeatedly, and on the second day for five hours at a stretch the enemy endeavored to come across from houses and inclosures west of Merville toward St. Venant. For those five hours the South Country lads fired with rifles, Lewis guns, and machine guns into solid bodies of Germans, and their field guns tore gaps in the enemy's formations and broke up their assemblies before the attacks could proceed. One advance in five waves was mown down before it could make any progress, and others were dealt with in the same way.

Mr. Gibbs describes the German repulse between Robecq and Givenchy as a "black day for the enemy," and continues:

April 19.—At the end of the day all the enemy's efforts ended in bloody failure, in spite of the daring and courage of his troops, who sacrificed themselves under the British fire, but were only able to gain a few bits of trench work and one or two outposts below the fortified works at Givenchy, which are quite useless to them for immediate or future use.

It was a big attack, for which they had prepared in a formidable way. After the shock of their repulse by the Lancashire men of the 55th Division they increased their strength of heavy artillery by three times bringing up large numbers of howitzers, including eleven-inch monsters. They were massed in divisions in front of us and determined to smash through in the wake of a tremendous bombardment.

BRITISH UNDER FIRE

For five hours, as I said, this storm went on with high explosives and gas, and the devoted British had to suffer this infernal thing, the worst ordeal human beings may be called upon to bear, this standing to while all the earth upheaved and the air was thick with shell splinters.

But when the bombardment had passed and the German infantry came forward the British received them with blasts of machine-gun fire, incessant volleys of rifle fire, and a trench mortar bombardment that burst with the deadliest effect among the attacking troops.

This trench mortar barrage of the British was one of the most awful means of slaughter yesterday, especially when the enemy tried to cross La BassÉe Canal further north, and in that sector the infantry and gunner officers say more Germans were killed yesterday along the canal bank than on any other day since the fighting in this neighborhood. One battery of trench mortars did most deadly execution until their pits were surrounded, and only two of their crews were able to escape.

The machine gunners fought out in the open after some of their positions had been wiped out by gunfire, caught the enemy waves at fifty yards' range, and mowed them down; but the enemy was not checked for a long time, despite his losses, and when one body fell another came up to fill its place and press on into any gap that had been made by their artillery or their own machine-gun sections.

There was one such momentary gap between a body of the Black Watch, who had been weakened by shellfire, and some of their comrades further north, and into this the enemy tried to force a way. Other Scottish troops were in reserve, and when it became clear that a portion of the line was endangered by this turning movement they came forward with grim intent, and by a fierce counterattack swept through the gap and flung back the enemy, so that the position was restored.

Further north some Gloucesters were fighting the enemy both ways, as once before in history, when they fought back to back, thereby winning the honor of wearing their cap badge back and front, which they do to this day. The Germans had worked behind them as well as in front of them, and they were in a tight corner, but did not yield, and finally, after hard fighting, cleared the ground about them.

Meanwhile further south some Lancashire troops on the canal lost some parts of their front line under an intense bombardment, but still fought on in the open, repulsing every effort to drive them back and smashing the enemy out of their positions, so that only remnants of the German outposts clung on until late last night, up to which time there was savage strife on both sides.

FIGHTING FOR THE CANAL

Extraordinary scenes took place on the canal bank when the enemy tried to cross. In the twilight of early dawn a party came out of a wood and tried to get across the water, but was seen by the British machine gunners and shot down.

Then another body of men advanced and carried with them a floating bridge, but when those who were not hit reached the water's edge they found the bridge as fixed did not reach to the other side. Some of them walked on it, expecting perhaps to jump the gap, but were shot off, and other men on the bank also were caught under British fire.

A Corporal went down to the canal edge and flung hand grenades at the Germans still struggling to fix the bridge, and then a Lieutenant and a few men rushed down and pulled the bridge on to their side of the bank.

Later this young officer saw one of the British pontoons drifting down and swam to it and made it fast beyond the enemy's reach, but in a position so that some of his men ran across and caught the enemy under their fire on his side of the canal.

At 7 o'clock yesterday morning, while a handkerchief was hoisted by the enemy, three hundred of them made signs of surrender. Some of them changed their minds at the last moment and ran away, but 150 gave themselves up, and some of them swam the canal in order to reach our side for this purpose. They were shivering in their wet clothes and in the northeast wind, which lashed over the battle lines yesterday, and they were very miserable men.

THE BELGIAN VICTORY

Mr. Gibbs declares that had the Germans been able to pass Givenchy or cross the canal north of BÉthune on the 18th and 19th the result would have proved disastrous. He gives credit for the repulse to the British and French combined lines. He thus describes the achievement of the Belgians on April 17:

The Germans on the 17th pressed the attack in force against the Belgians. Besides three regiments of the 1st Landwehr Division usually holding this sector, between the Ypres-Staden railway and Kippe, they brought up from Dixmude—poor Dixmude, into whose flaming ruins I went when it was first bombarded in October, 1914—two regiments of the 6th Bavarian Division, and from the coast the 5th Matrosen Regiment of the 2d Naval Division, with a regiment of the 58th Saxons. It was a heavy force, and they hoped to surprise and annihilate the Belgian resistance by their weight and quickness of attack.

The Belgians were waiting for them, standing, too, in those swampy fields which they have held against the enemy for three and a half years, always shelled, always paying daily a toll of life and limb, not getting much glory or recognition because of the great battles elsewhere, but patient and enduring as when I knew them on the Yser in the first dreadful Winter of the war, and their little regular army fought to a finish.

Even before the battle the German marines, Saxon troops, and Landwehr suffered misery and lost many men. They lay out in the flat, wet fields two nights previously, and were very cold, and scared by the Belgian gunfire which burst among them. They had no great artillery behind them, and the Saxons and German sailors now prisoners of the Belgians curse bitterly because they were expected to get through easily in spite of this.

Germans Cut Off

The enemy's intention was to take Bixschoote and advance across the Yser Canal, driving south to Poperinghe. What they did by their massed attacks was to penetrate to a point near Hoekske, southeast of Merckem, the main weight of their pressure being directed along the Bixschoote road. The Belgians delivered a quick counterattack, with wonderful enthusiasm among officers and men. They had perfect knowledge of the country, and used this fully by striking up from a place called Luyghem in such a way that the enemy was driven toward the swamp, where any who went in sank up to his neck in the ice-cold water.

The Germans were cut off from their own lines and trapped. Seven hundred of them surrendered, men of all the regiments I have mentioned, and they seemed to think themselves lucky at getting off so cheaply, though they quailed when they were brought back through the towns behind the lines, and the Belgian women, remembering many things, raised a cry as these men passed. It was not a pleasant sound. I heard it once in France when a German officer passed through with an escort. It was a cry which made my blood run cold. But there is gladness among the Belgian troops, for they had long waited for their chance of striking, and made good.

Heroism of the Doctors

As heroic a story as anything in all this history of the last four weeks is that of the medical officers, nurses, orderlies, and ambulance men belonging to these casualty clearing stations, who were not far behind the fighting lines when the battle began on March 21.

And then in a few hours they were on the very edge of the enemy's advancing tide, so that they were almost caught by it and had to make brave efforts to rescue the wounded, save their equipment, and get away to a place where for a little while again they could go on with their noble work until the red edge of war swept up with its fire again and they had to retreat still further.

I used to pass very often the outer ring of those casualty clearing stations on the right of the British line beyond Bapaume, in the Cambrai salient, and away toward St. Quentin.

They were almost caught on that day of March 21 when the infernal bombardment was flung over a wide belt of the British lines, and the enemy stormed the defenses and the British fought back in heroic rearguard actions. It became a question of only a few hours, sometimes of the last quarter of an hour, when these brave medical officers with the nurses and orderlies could get away.

It is always the rule of patients first, and at Ham there were 1,200 wounded, and many others in other places. The railways were choked with military transport or destroyed by shellfire. On the roads refugees were mixed up with the transport and guns and troops. It was a frightful problem, but the medical staffs did not lose their nerve, and set about the business of removal with fine skill and discipline.

Caring for the Wounded

What wounded could walk were gathered together and sent on to the roads to make their way back as far as their strength would carry them. The badly wounded were packed into all the available ambulances and sent away. The equipment had sometimes to be put on any train, regardless of its destination. It was gathered in afterward from whatever place it went to.

A casualty clearing station of 1,000 beds needs 100 lorries to move it, but nine lorries take a full kit for 200 beds, and always nine lorries moved off first after the wounded to take up a new station further back and carry on. The medical officers looked after the surgical instruments and trundled them along the roads on wheeled stretchers. One officer went twenty-five miles this way and another seventeen miles. The sisters, after the wounded had left, were put on any vehicle going back from the battleline.

During these days I saw them squeezed between drivers and men on motor lorries, sitting among the Tommies in transport wagons, one at least on a gun limber, and others perched on top of forage, still merry and bright in spite of all the tragedy about them, because that is their training and their faith.

In this retreat one poor sister was killed and another wounded. Many of them, with the medical officers, lost their kits. At Achiet le Grand, on March 21, a shell killed eight orderlies and blew out the back of the operating theatre, and at another village on a second night, three ambulances were smashed up by bombs. Two drivers, with some of their patients, were killed, but all the wounded were brought away from the outer ring of casualty clearing stations safely, and then from the second ring through Roye and Marincourt, Dernacourt, and Aveluy.

At Roye there was no time to spare, owing to the enemy's rapid advance, and seventy patients remained with a medical officer and twelve orderlies until they could be rescued, if there was any possible chance. There seemed at first no chance, but on the way back to Villers-Bretonneux the medical officer in command of the first convoy met some motor ambulances and begged the drivers to go into Roye and rescue those who had been left behind. They went bravely and brought away all the wounded and the staff, and had no time to spare, because the last ambulance came under the German rifle fire.

It is a strange and wonderful thing that the patients do not seem to be harmed in any way by this excitement and fatigue, and one of the chiefs who made a tour of inspection of all his clearing stations at this time tells us he found all the wounded in good condition and apparently no worse for their experience.

Fall of Villers-Bretonneux

On April 24 the Germans attacked the important village of Villers-Bretonneux, near Amiens; it is on a hill above the Somme, and was used as a corps headquarters and administrative office by the British. The attack was in great force, including tanks, the first time they had been used by the Germans.

The initial assault was a success and the Germans took the village and advanced nearly a mile beyond—but let Mr. Gibbs tell the rest:

During the night they were driven out by Australian troops, who, by a most skillful and daring piece of generalship, were sent forward in the darkness without preliminary artillery preparation, and, relying absolutely on the weapons they carried to regain this important portion, which gave the enemy full observation of the British positions on both sides of the Somme Valley beyond Amiens.

The splendid courage of the Australian troops, the cunning of their machine gunners, and the fine leadership of their officers achieved success, and, in conjunction with English battalions, they spent the night clearing out the enemy from the village, where he made a desperate resistance, and brought back altogether something like 700 or 800 prisoners.

It was a complete reversal of fortune for the enemy, and in this twenty-four hours of fighting he has lost great numbers of men, whose bodies lie in heaps between Villers-Bretonneux and Warfusee and all about the ruins and fields in that neighborhood.

First German Tanks

The attack on Villers-Bretonneux was made by four divisions. They were the 4th Guards, the 77th, quite new to this phase of the war, the 228th, and the 243d. They were in the full strength of divisions, twelve regiments in each, and a great weight of men on such a narrow front against one British division, whose men had already been under frightful fire and had been living in clouds of poison gas with masks on.

An officer of the Middlesex was in a bit of a trench when the first German tank attacked his men on the east side of the village, and it went right over him as he lay crouched, and traveled on, accompanied by bodies of troops.

The Middlesex and West Yorks put up a great fight but had to give ground to superior numbers. The East Lancashires, who were the garrison of Villers-Bretonneux, were also attacked with great odds, and after a brave resistance fell back with the general line, which took up a position toward the end of this first phase of the battle west of Villers-Bretonneux and in the edge of Bois AbbÉ to the left of it. Into this wood in the course of the day a German patrol of one officer and forty men made their way and stayed there out of touch with their own men, and were taken prisoners last night.

The Night Battle

The attack by the Australians was made after 10 o'clock at night. It was difficult to attack suddenly like this. There was no artillery preparation. There should have been a moon, but by bad luck it was veiled in a thick, wet mist.

It was decided by the Australian General that his men should go straight into the attack with bayonet and machine gun, not waiting for artillery protection which would tell the enemy what was coming.

The plan of attack was to push forward in two bodies and to encircle Villers-Bretonneux, while some Northamptons and others were in the centre with the order to fight through the village from the north. This manoeuvre was carried out owing to the magnificent courage of each Australian soldier and the gallantry of the officers.

The Germans fought desperately when they found themselves in danger of being trapped. They had nests of machine guns along the railway embankment below the village, and these fired fiercely, sweeping the attackers who tried to advance upon them.

Those who worked around north and east of the village also came under a burst of machine-gun fire from weapons hidden among the ruins and trenches, but they rounded up the enemy and fought him from one bit of ruin to another in streets which used to be filled with civilian life only a few weeks ago and crowded with staff officers and staff cars, but now were littered with dead bodies and raked by bullets.

The Australians captured two light field guns, which the enemy had brought up in the morning, according to his present habit of advancing guns behind his third wave of men, and several minenwerfer and many machine guns.

Great Piles of Dead

During the night they and the English troops seized over 500 men as prisoners and sent them back, and several hundred seem to have been routed out. Today, [the 25th,] judging from these I saw myself, the living were not so many as the dead.

It was fierce fighting in Villers-Bretonneux and around it last night and this morning the enemy fought until put out by bayonet, rifle bullet, or machine gun. The Australian officers say that they have never seen such piles of dead, not even outside of Bullecourt or Lagnicourt last year, as those who lie about this village of frightful strife.

The German tanks, which were first seen in this battle, though heavier than the British, with bigger guns, have now beaten a retreat, leaving one of their type in No Man's Land. The tank has a high turret and thick armor plates, and is steered and worked on a different system from the British. One of them was "killed" by a tank of the old British class, and then the British put in some of the newer, faster, and smaller types, which can steer almost as easily as a motor car, as I know, because I have traveled in one at great pace over rough ground.

These set out to attack bodies of German infantry of the 77th Division forming up near Cachy. It was a terrible encounter, and when they returned this morning their flanks were red with blood. They slew Germans not by dozens nor by scores, but by platoons and companies. They got right among the masses of men and swept them with fire, and those they did not kill with their guns they crushed beneath them, manoeuvring about and trampling them down as they fell. It seems to have been as bloody a slaughter as anything in this war.

Battle for Kemmel Hill

The furious battle for the possession of Kemmel Hill, an eminence of strategic importance in the Ypres region, occurred April 25, 26, and 27, and was as sanguinary as any in Flanders. Although the Germans won the hill, their victory involved such colossal sacrifices that this deadly thrust ended their serious offensive for the time. Mr. Gibbs's description of this battle in part follows:

After several attempts against Kemmel had been frustrated the enemy all went out, April 25, to capture this position. Four divisions at least, including the Alpine Corps, the 11th Bavarians, and the 5th, 6th, and 107th, were moved against Kemmel in the early morning fog after a tremendous bombardment of the Franco-British positions. It was a bombardment that begun before the first glimmer of dawn, like one of those which the British used to arrange in the days of their great Flanders battles last year. It came down swamping Kemmel Hill so that it was like a volcano, and stretched away on to the British lines on the left of the French by Maedelstede Farm and Grand Bois down to Vierstraat.

Then the German infantry attacked in depth, battalion behind battalion, division behind division, and their mountain troops of Alpine Corps and JÄgers and Bavarians came on first in the assault of Kemmel Hill, which was not much more than a hillock, though it looms large in Flanders, and in this war. The French had suffered a terrible ordeal of fire, and the main thrust of the German strength was against them.

Foe Strikes in Two Directions

The enemy struck in two directions to encircle the hill and village of Kemmel, one arrowhead striking to Dranoutre and the other at the point of junction between the French and British northward.

In each case they were favored by fog and the effect of their gunfire. They were able to drive in a wedge which they pushed forward until they had caused gaps. The French on Kemmel Hill became isolated and there was a gulf between the British and the French and between the French left and right.

On the hill the French garrison fought with splendid heroism. These men, when quite surrounded, would not yield, but served their machine guns and rifles for many hours, determined to hold their positions at all costs, and to the death. Small parties of them on the west of the hill held out until midday or beyond, according to the reports of the airmen, who flew low over them, but by 9 o'clock this morning, owing to the gaps made by the enemy, the French main line was compelled to draw back from Kemmel.

They inflicted severe losses on the enemy as they fell back and thwarted his efforts to break their line on the new defensive positions. Meanwhile a body of Scottish troops were seriously involved. Some of their officers whom I saw today tell me the fog was so thick, as on March 21, that after a terrific bombardment the first thing known at some points a little way behind the line was when the Germans were all around them.

Germans Under Von Arnim

The German army of assault upon Kemmel and the surrounding country was under command of General Sixt von Arnim, who was the leading opponent of the Allies in the long struggle of the first Somme battles, and whose clear and ruthless intelligence was revealed in the famous document summing up the first phase of that fighting, when he frankly confessed to many failures of organization and supply, but with acute criticism which was not that of a weak or indecisive man.

Under his command as corps commanders were Generals Seiger and von Eberhardt, and they had picked troops, including the Alpine Corps and strong Bavarian and Prussian divisions specially trained for assault in such country as that of Kemmel. Their plan of attack to strike at the points of junction between the French and British east of Kemmel, and also at the French troops south of it, near Dranoutre, proved for the time successful, and by driving in wedges they were able to make the Allies fall back on the flanks and encircle Kemmel Hill after furious and heroic fighting by the French and British troops.

The British now were in weak numbers compared with the strength brought against them. Their withdrawal to the new lines of defense by Vierstraat and the furious attacks across the Ypres-Comines Canal gave the enemy some ground in the region of St. Eloi and the bluff and the spoil bank of the canal itself. It is villainous ground there, foul with wreckage of the old fighting.

British troops and Canadian troops were put to the supreme test of courage to take and hold these places. The glorious old 3d Division, commanded in those days of 1915 and 1916 by General Haldane, fought from St. Eloi to the bluff, month in and month out, and lost many gallant officers and men there after acts of courage which belong to history.

German storm troops made three violent attacks on Locre, which were flung back by the French, with heavy casualties among the enemy, and it was only at the fourth attempt with fresh reserves that they were able to enter the ruins of the village, from which the French then fell back in order to reorganize for a counterattack. This they launched today at an early hour, and now Locre is in their hands after close fighting, in which they slew numbers of the enemy.

After their success on April 25, when they captured Kemmel, the Germans have made little progress, and, though there was fierce fighting all day yesterday, they failed to gain their objectives, and were raked by fire hour after hour, so that large numbers of their dead lie on the field of battle. At 4 in the afternoon they engaged in fresh assaults upon the positions near Ridge Wood, to which the line had fallen back, but English and Scottish troops repulsed them and scattered their waves. It was a bad day for them because of their great losses. The British have broken the fighting quality of some of the enemy's most renowned regiments.

The Country Devastated

All the roads and camps around Ypres are under a heavy, harassing fire once more, Ypres itself being savagely bombarded by high-explosive and gas shells, so that after some months of respite those poor ruins are again under that black spell which makes them the most sinister place in the world. Suicide Corner has come into its own again, and the old unhealthy plague spots up by the canal are under fire.

The enemy's guns are reaching out to fields and villages hitherto untouched by fire, and these harassing shots, intended, perhaps, to catch traffic on the roads or soldiers' camps, often serve the enemy no more than by the death of innocent women and children. A day or two ago a monstrous shell fell just outside a little Flemish cottage tucked away in an angle of a road which I often pass. It scooped out a deep pit in the garden without even scarring the cottage walls, but two children were playing in the garden and were laid dead beside a flower bed.

Yesterday a small boy I know went grubbing about this plot of earth and brought back a great chunk of shell bigger than his head. Those are the games children play in this merry century of ours. They are astoundingly indifferent to the perils about them, and sleep o' nights to the thunder of gunfire not very far away, or slip their heads under the bedclothes when bombs fall near.

But older folk find this gradual creeping up of the war a nervous strain and a mental agony which keeps them on the rack. It is pitiful to watch their doubts and perplexities and their clinging on to their homes and property. Shells smash outlying cottages to dust with their people inside them, but still the people in the village itself stay on, hoping against hope that the Germans' guns have reached their furthest range.

"I shall not go till the first shell falls in the middle of the square," said a girl.

Another woman said:

"If I go I lose all I have in life, so I will risk another day."

They take extraordinary risks, and our officers and men find some of them on the very battlefields and in farmyards where they unlimber their guns.

Heavy German Losses

The enemy's losses in this continual fighting have been severe. We have been able to get actual figures of some of their casualties, which are typical of the more general effect of the British fire. Of one company of the 7th German Division which fought at St. Eloi on Friday only 40 men remained out of its full strength of 120.

The 4th Ersatz Division lost most heavily, and a prisoner of the 279th Pioneer Company, which relieved the 360th Regiment of that division, says the average company strength was fifteen men.

The entire regimental staff was killed by a direct hit of a British shell on their headquarters dugout near Cantieux. The same thing happened to the battalion headquarters of the 223d Regiment, which is now in a state of low morale, having been fearfully cut up.

The 1st Guards Reserve Regiment of the 1st Guards Division, which was much weakened in the fighting on the Somme and afterward was sent to La BassÉe, lost thirty-six officers, including a regimental commander and one battalion commander. These losses are affecting inevitably the outlook of the German troops on the prospects of their continued offensive.

Prisoners from divisions which suffered most confess they have no further enthusiasm for fighting, and that their regiments can only be made to attack by stern discipline and the knowledge that they must fight on or be shot for desertion.

On the other hand, the best German troops, especially those now attacking in Flanders, like the Alpine Corps and 11th Bavarian Division, are elated and full of warlike spirit.

Even their prisoners profess to believe they are winning the war and will have a German peace before the year is out.

Desperate Fighting for Ypres

The Germans vainly launched desperate attacks of unexampled fury against the British and French lines in the Ypres region on April 29. Mr. Gibbs in his cable dispatch of that date thus refers to these assaults:

It becomes clearer every hour that the enemy suffered a disastrous defeat today. Attack after attack was smashed up by the British artillery and infantry, and he has not made a foot of ground on the British front.

The Border Regiment this morning repulsed four heavy assaults on the Kemmel-La Clytte road, where there was extremely hard fighting, and destroyed the enemy each time.

One of the enemy's main thrusts was between Scherpenberg and Mont Rouge, where they made a wedge for a time and captured the crossroads, and it was here that a gallant French counterattack swept them back.

The British had no more than a post or two in Voormezeele this morning, and the enemy was there in greater strength, and sent his storm troops through this place, but was never able to advance against the fire of the British battalions.

His losses began yesterday, when his troops were seen massing on the road between Zillebeke and Ypres in a dense fog, through which he attempted to make a surprise attack. This was observed by low-flying planes, and his assembly was shattered by gunfire. After a fierce shelling all night, so tremendous along the whole northern front that the countryside was shaken by its tumult, German troops again assembled in the early morning mist, but were caught once more in the British bombardment.

At 3 o'clock a tremendous barrage was flung down by the German gunners from Ypres to Bailleul, and later they began the battle by launching first an attack between Zillebeke Lake and Meteren. South of Ypres they crossed the Yser Canal by Lock 8, near Voormezeele, which was their direction of attack against the British, while they tried to drive up past Locre against the French on the three hills.

The successful defense has made the day most bloody for many German regiments.

Enemy's Attacks Futile

In order to turn them if frontal attacks failed against the French, German storm troops—they are now called grosskampf, or great offensive troops—were to break the British lines on the French left between Locre and Voormezeele and on the French right near Merris and Meteren. That obviously was the intention of the German High Command this morning, judging from their direction of assault.

So far they have failed utterly. They failed to break or bend the British wings on the French centre, and they failed to capture the hills, or any one of them, defended by the French divisions.

They have attacked again and again since this morning's dawn, heavy forces of German infantry being sent forward after their first waves against Scherpenberg and Voormezeele, which lies to the east of Dickebusch Lake, but these men have been slaughtered by the French and British fire and made no important progress at any point.

For a time the situation seemed critical at one or two points, and it was reported that the Germans had been storming the slopes of Mont Rouge and Mont Noir, but one of the British airmen flew over these hills at 200 feet above their crests, and could see no German infantry near them.

Round about Voormezeele, North Country and other English battalions had to sustain determined and furious efforts of Alpine and Bavarian troops to drive through them by weight of numbers, after hours of intense bombardment, but the men held their ground and inflicted severe punishment upon the enemy.

All through the day the German losses have been heavy under field-gun and machine-gun fire, and the British batteries, alongside the French seventy-fives, swept down the enemy's advancing waves and his masses assembled in support at short range.

There is no doubt that the French guarding the three hills have fought with extreme valor and skill. For a brief period the Germans apparently were able to draw near and take some of the ground near Locre, but an immediate counterattack was organized by the French General, and the line of French troops swung forward and swept the enemy back. Further attacks by the Germans north of Ypres and on the Belgian front were repulsed easily, and again the enemy lost many men.

French and British Valor

On April 30 Mr. Gibbs confirmed the details of the disastrous German defeats on the two preceding days and gave these further particulars:

It was the valor of Frenchmen as well as Englishmen which yesterday inflicted defeat upon many German divisions, and the Allies fought side by side, and their batteries fired from the same fields and their wounded came back along the same roads, and the khaki and blue lay out upon the same brown earth.

I have already given an outline of yesterday's battle, how, after a colossal bombardment, the German attack early in the morning from north of Ypres to south of Voormezeele, where English battalions held the lines, and from La Clytte past the three hills of Scherpenberg, Mont Rouge, and Mont Noir, which French troops held to the north of Meteren, where the English joined them; again, how the English Tommies held firm against desperate assaults until late in the evening; how the enemy made a great thrust against the French, driving in for a time between Scherpenberg and Mont Noir until they were flung back by a French counterattack.

In the night the French, who had now regained all the ground that had been temporarily in the enemy's hands, made a general counterattack and succeeded in advancing their line to a depth of about fifteen hundred yards beyond the line of the three hills, which thereby was made more secure against future assaults.

Deadly Machine-Gun Work

Meanwhile throughout the day the English battalions had been sustaining heavy assaults, breaking the enemy against their front. The Leicesters, especially, had fierce fighting about Voormezeele, where, as I told yesterday, the enemy was in the centre of the village. German storm troops advanced against our men here and along other parts of the line with fixed bayonets, but in most places, except Voormezeele, where there was close fighting, they were mowed down by Lewis-gun fire before they could get near. Line after line of them came on, but lost heavily and fell back.

Over the ground east of Dickebusch Lake some Yorkshire troops saw these groups of field gray men advancing upon them, and the glint of their bayonets, wet in the morning mist, and swept them with bullets from the Lewis guns and rifles until heaps of bodies were lying out there on the mud flats in the old Ypres salient. The most determined assaults were concentrated upon the 25th Division, but it held firm and would not budge, though the men had been under fearful fire in the night bombardment, and their machine gunners kept their triggers pressed, and bullets played upon the advancing Germans like a stream from a garden hose.

The troops in the whole division yielded no yard of ground and they hold that they killed as many Germans as any battalion in this battle. It was a black day for Germany. More than ten German divisions, probably thirteen, seem to have been engaged in this attempt to smash our lines and encircle the three hills. They included some of the enemy's finest divisions, so they lost quality as well as quantity in this futile sacrifice of man-power—man-power which seems to mean nothing in flesh and blood and heart and soul to men like Ludendorff, but is treated as a material force like guns and ammunition and used as cannon fodder.

Brilliant French Fighters

Referring to the French troops in this battle, Mr. Gibbs wrote:

Today again I have been among the thousands of French soldiers. It is splendid to see them because of their fine bearing. They are men in the prime of life, not so young as some of the British and with a graver look than one sees on British faces, when they have not yet reached the zone of fire. They are men who have seen all that war means during these years of agony and hope and boredom and death. They have no illusions. They stare into the face of death unflinchingly and shrug their shoulders at its worst menace and still have faith in victory.

So I read them, if any man may read the thoughts that lie behind those bronzed faces with the dark eyes and upturned mustaches under the blue painted helmets or the black Tam o' Shanters.

They are not gay or boisterous in their humor, and they do not sing like the British as they march, but they seem to have been born to this war, and its life is their life, and they are professionals.

The Tricolor passes along the roads of France and Flanders, and French trumpets ring out across the flat fields below Scherpenberg, and all the spirit of the French fighting men, who have proved themselves great soldiers in this war, as for thousands of years of history, is mingled with our own battalions. Together yesterday they gave the German Army a hard knock.

In his cable of May 1 Mr. Gibbs gave details of the extraordinary heroism of the British Guards. He related incidents which had occurred April 11 to 14, after the Germans had broken through the Portuguese in their efforts to widen the gap between ArmentiÈres and Merville by gaining the crossings of the Lys.

The Grenadier, Irish, and Coldstream Guards were sent forward along the Hazebrouck-Estaires road when the situation was at its worst, when the men of the 15th Division and other units had fought themselves out in continual rearguard and holding actions, so that some of those still in the line could hardly walk or stand, and when it was utterly necessary to keep the Germans in check until a body of Australian troops had time to arrive. The Guards were asked to hold back the enemy until those Australians came and to fight at all costs for forty-eight hours against the German tide of men and guns which was attempting to flow around the other hard pressed men, and that is what the Guards did, fighting in separate bodies with the enemy pressing in on both flanks.

Greatly outnumbered, they beat back attack after attack, and gained precious hours, vital hours, by the most noble self-sacrifice. A party of Grenadiers were so closely surrounded that their officer sent back a message saying:

"My men are standing back to back and shooting on all sides."

The Germans swung around them, circling them with machine guns and rifles and pouring a fire into them until only eighteen men were left. Those eighteen, standing among their wounded and their dead, did not surrender. The army wanted forty-eight hours. They fixed bayonets and went out against the enemy and drove through him. A wounded Corporal of Grenadiers, who afterward got back to the British lines, lay in a ditch, and the last he saw of his comrades was when fourteen men of them were still fighting in a swarm of Germans.

Fought Back to Back

The Coldstream Guards were surrounded in the same way and fought in the same way. The army had asked for forty-eight hours until the Australians could come, and many of the Coldstreamers eked out the time with their lives. The enemy filtered in on their flanks, came crawling around them with machine guns, sniped them from short range and raked them from ditches and upheaved earth.

The Coldstream Guards had to fall back, but they fought back in small groups, facing all ways and making gaps in the enemy's ranks, not firing wildly, but using every round of small-arms ammunition to keep a German back and gain a little more time.

Forty-eight hours is a long time in a war like this. For two days and nights the Irish Guards, who had come up to support the Grenadiers and Coldstreamers, tried to make a defensive flank, but the enemy worked past their right and attacked them on two sides. The Irish Guards were gaining time. They knew that was all they could do, just drag out the hours by buying each minute with their blood. One man fell and then another; but minutes were gained, and quarters of hours and hours.

Small parties of them lowered their bayonets and went out among the gray wolves swarming around them, and killed a number of them until they also fell. First one party and then another of these Irish Guards made those bayonet charges against men with machine guns and volleys of rifle fire. They bought time at a high price, but they did not stint themselves nor stop their bidding because of its costliness.

The brigade of Guards here and near Vieux Berquin held out for those forty-eight hours, and some of them were fighting still when the Australians arrived, according to the timetable.

Carnage Near Locre

Mr. Gibbs, in a dispatch dated May 3, gave these vivid descriptions of the fighting in the Locre-Dranoutre-Kemmel region:

On April 24 the German bombardment was intensified and spread over a deep area, destroying villages, tearing up roads, and making a black vomit of the harrowed fields. Dranoutre, Locre, Westoutre, and other small towns were violently bombarded. That night the French discovered that the Germans were preparing an attack for the next morning, to be preceded by a gas bombardment. The officers warned all their men, and they stood on the alert with gas masks when at 3:30 in the morning thousands of gas shells fell over them, mixed with high explosives of all calibres up to the monster twelve-inch, which burst like volcanic eruptions.

In the intensity of bombardment several officers who fought at Fleury said: "This is the most frightful thing we have seen. Verdun was nothing to it."

All the French troops jammed on gas masks, and on one day put them on fifty times, only removing them when the wind, which was fairly strong, blew away the poison fumes until other storms of shells came. For nearly a week they wore them constantly, sleeping in them, officers giving orders in them, and the men fighting and dying in them and charging with the bayonet in them. It was worth the trouble and suffering, for this French regiment between Locre and Dranoutre had only twelve gas casualties.

That morning the German attack fell first on Kemmel Hill, which they turned from the north, and two hours later, the bombardment continuing all along the line, they developed a strong attack against Dranoutre in the south in order to take Locre and turn the French right. Until evening the troops on Kemmel Hill, with a small body of British, still held out with great devotion in isolated positions, but by 8 o'clock that morning Kemmel Hill was entirely cut off.

Other British Units in Danger

This was a severe menace to their comrades at Locre and southward, because both their flanks were threatened. They did heroic things to safeguard their right and left, which again and again the enemy tried to pass. I have already told in a previous message how a gallant French officer and a small company of men made a counterattack at Dranoutre and held the post there against all odds.

Up by Locre the commandant of the left battalion found machine-gun fire sweeping his left flank, and his men had to face left to defend their line. Small parties of Germans with machine guns kept filtering down from the north and established themselves on the railway in order to rake the French with an enfilade fire.

One French company, led by devoted officers, counterattacked there five times with the bayonet into the sweep of those bullets, and by this sacrifice saved their flank. Another company advanced to hold the hospice. There was desperate fighting day after day, so that its ruins, if any bits of wall are left, will be as historic as the chÂteau at Vermelles, or other famous houses of the battlefields.

French and Germans took it turn and turn about, and although the enemy sent great numbers of men to garrison this place they never were able to hold it long, because always some young French Lieutenant and a handful of men stormed it again and routed the enemy. When it was taken last on April 29, the day of the enemy's severe defeat, the French captured 100 prisoners in the cellars there, and they belonged to fourteen battalions of four regiments of three divisions, showing the amazing way in which the enemy's divisions have been flung into confusion by the French fire.

Under Constant Shellfire

On the morning of April 26 French companies made six attacks, and in the afternoon two more, and though their losses were heavy, that evening both the village and hospice of Locre stayed in their hands. That night, their men being exhausted for a time after so many hours under fire, they withdrew their line a little to the Locre-Bailleul road by the ChÂteau of Locre and west of Dranoutre in order to reorganize a stronger defense. The German bombardment slackened on the morning of April 28 owing to fog, and those few hours on that day and one other were the only respite these French troops had from the incessant and infernal gunfire when, owing to open warfare, "en rase campagne," as the French call it, as in 1914, without a complete system of trenches or dugouts or other artificial cover, they were much exposed.

"There were ten big shells a second," one of these officers told me, "and that lasted, with only two short pauses, for six days all through the battle, and other shells were uncountable."

The enemy had brought up light artillery and trench mortars almost to his front lines in Dranoutre Wood and other places and attempted to take the French in an enfilade fire from Kemmel, but by this time many French guns were in position, reinforcing the British artillery, and on the 28th they opened up and killed great numbers of the enemy.

Allied aviators saw long columns of Germans on the roads by Neuve Eglise and in Dranoutre Wood, and signaled to the guns to range on these human targets. The guns answered. Masses of Germans were smashed by the fire and panicstricken groups were seen running out of Dranoutre Wood.

Night of Horror for Germans

That night the Germans seemed to be relieving their troops, and again the French and British guns flung shells into them, and for the enemy it was a night of death and horror; but the next day, the 29th, the enemy made reply by a prolonged bombardment, more intense even than before, and then attacked with new troops all along the line. But the French also had many fresh troops in line—not those I met yesterday—who at 2 o'clock in the morning went forward into attack and took back the village. This defeated the enemy's plan of turning the French left.

All through that day the enemy's desperate efforts to break through were shattered, and that night the French held exactly the same ground as before and had caused enormous losses to the German divisions, at least 40 per cent. of their strength, as it is reckoned on close evidence.

That night even the German guns stopped their drumfire, as though Sixt von Arnim's army was in mourning for its dead. It was a night of strange and uncanny silence after the stupendous tumult, but for those French regiments who had been holding the line for nearly a week it had been a day of supreme ordeal.

Preparing for Another Advance

There were no general engagements during the preceding five days nor up to May 18, but incessant artillery fire was kept up and raids were constantly made. On May 5 Mr. Gibbs described the difficulties encountered by the Germans in preparing for a new advance:

The enemy has many divisions, both up in the Flemish fields and on the Somme, divisions in line and divisions in reserve—divisions crowded in reserve—and there are few roads for them down which to march. There is not much elbow room for such masses to assemble, and not much cover in trenches or dugouts from high explosives or shrapnel. So we pound them to death, many of them to death and many of them to stretcher cases, and relief comes up, gets wildly mixed with the divisions coming down, and at night there is mad confusion in the ranks of marching men and transport columns, which gallop past dead horses and splintered wagons and wrecks of transport columns, and among the regimental and divisional staffs, trying to keep order in the German way when things are being smashed into chaos, while the Red Cross convoys are over-loaded with wounded and unable to cope with all the bodies that lie about.

This is what is happening behind the German lines—I have not overdrawn the picture, believe me—and it is upsetting somewhat the plans of the high German officers who are arranging things from afar through telephones, down which they shout their orders.

"The Drums of Death"

In his dispatch of May 9 the following was written to describe the difficulties of the Germans in reorganizing their battered forces:

From many points the British have complete observation of the enemy's positions there, as he has of theirs from the other side of the way, and, needless to say, they are making use of this direct view by flinging over storms of shells whenever his transport is seen crawling along the tracks of the old Somme battlefields or his troops are seen massing among their shell craters.

The town of Albert itself, where once until recent history the golden Virgin used to lean downward with her babe outstretched above the ruins, is now a death trap for the German garrisons there and for any German gunners who try to hide their batteries among the red brick houses. By day and night their positions are pounded with high explosives and soaked in asphyxiating gas.

I went within 2,000 yards of it yesterday, and saw the heaviest work of the British upon it. It was a wonderful May day, as today is, and the sun shone through a golden haze upon the town. As I looked into Albert and saw the shells smashing through, and then away up the Albert-Bapaume road, past the white rim of the great mine crater of La Boiselle to the treeless slopes of PosiÈres, and over all that ground of hills and ditches to the high, wooded distant right, with its few dead stumps of trees, it was hard to believe that all this was in the area of the German Army, that the white, winding lines freshly marked upon this bleak landscape were new German trenches, and that the enemy's outposts were less than 2,000 yards from where I stood.

Fritz Having a "Thin Time"

Some siege gunners were lying on their stomachs and observing the enemy's lines for some monsters I had seen on my way up, monsters that raised their snouts slowly, like elephants' trunks, before bellowing out with an earthquake roar, annihilating all one's senses for a second. Some of the men passed the remark to me that "Albert isn't the town it was" and that "Fritz must be having a thin time there." They also expressed the opinion that the Albert-Bapaume road was not a pleasant walk for Germans on a sunny afternoon.

I did not dispute these points with them, for they were beyond argument. Big shells were smashing into Albert and its neighborhood from many heavy batteries, raising volcanic explosions there, and shrapnel was bursting over the tracks in white splashes.

In describing the artillery fire which broke up a threatened assault on May 5, Mr. Gibbs wrote:

A new German division, the 52d Reserve, and the 56th German Division prepared an assault on Ridge Wood. All these men were crowded into narrow assembly grounds and did not have quiet hours before the moment of attack. They had hours of carnage in the darkness. British and French guns were answering back the German bombardment with their heaviest fire. French howitzers, long-muzzled fellows, which during recent weeks I had seen crawling through Flanders with the cornflowers, as the French soldiers call themselves, crowded about them on the gun limbers and transport wagons and muddy horses, and which had traveled long kilometers, were now in action from their emplacements between the ruined villages of the Flemish war zone, and with their little brothers, the soixante-quinzes, their blood-thirsty little brothers, were savage in their destruction and harassing fire.

I have seen the soixante-quinze at work and have heard the rafale des tambours de la mort—the ruffle of the drums of death—as the sound of their fire is described by all soldier writers of France. It was that fire, that slashing and sweeping fire, which helped to break up any big plan of attack against the French troops yesterday morning, and from those assembly places a great part of the German infantry never moved all day, but spent their time, it seems, in carrying back their wounded.

Tragic Desolation of Arras

Mr. Gibbs on May 11 described a visit to Arras, as follows:

Since the beginning of these great battles in bleak, cold weather Spring has come, and almost Summer, changing all the aspect of the old battlefields and of the woods behind craterland and of the cities under fire.

I went into one of those cities the other day, Arras, which to me and to many of us out here is a queerly enchanted place because of its beauty, which survives even three years of bombardment, and because of the many great memories which it holds in its old houses and streets and the sense of romance which lurks in its courtyards and squares, reaching back to ancient history before its death. For Arras is dead and but the beautiful corpse of the city that was once very fair and noble.

During the recent weeks the enemy has flung many big explosive shells into it, so that its ruins have become more ruined and many houses hardly touched before have now been destroyed. It was sad to see this change, the fresh mangling of stones that had already been scarred, the heaps of masonry that lay piled about these streets that were utterly deserted. I walked down many of them and saw no living soul, only a few lean cats which prowled about, slinking close to the walls and crouching when a German shell came over with a rending noise.

Bright sunlight shone down these streets, putting a lazy glamour upon their broken frontages and flinging back shadows from high walls, except where shell holes let in the light. The cathedral and the great Palace of the Bishops were unroofed, with tall pillars broken off below the vaulting and an avalanche of white masonry about them. They were clear-cut and dazzling under the blue sky, and one was hushed by the tragic grandeur of these ruins.

One of the British airplanes flew low over the city, and its engine sang loudly with a vibrant humming, and now and again the crash of a gun or a shell loosened some stones or plaster below its wings. Other birds were singing. Spring birds, who are not out for war but sweethearting in the gardens of Arras.

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