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Show BOGMES TAKEN U11ES B! EARLYJTTACK Loss of Australians Surprisingly Surpris-ingly Light in Advance Along Four-Mile r Front. TANKS WORK WELL IN AIDING ANZACS Whole Action Completed Within an Hour or So After Its Start; Many Prisoners Taken. By PHILIP GIBBS. Chicago Tribune-New York Times Cppyright. WAtI CORRESPONDENTS' HEADQUARTERS, HEAD-QUARTERS, July 4. By a surprise ai-taAt ai-taAt this morning' the Australians have taken possibly more thaJi 1500 prisoners in an advance of one and a half miles on a four-mile front, including the village vil-lage of Hamel and the trench system beyond be-yond it south of the Somme. Their own losses were astonishingly light. When I went into the Australian area this morning it was difficult to believe an attack had taken place, for there were none of the usual scenes which follow fol-low a battle, however successful, showing the price that must be paid nearly always for victory. There was no great traffic of ambulances on the roads. I passed several casualty clearing stations above which Red Cross flags waved, but their tents were empty and there was nothing doing at that hour in the morning. There was no long trail of slightly wounded men. Even the guns seemed no more noisy than on any fine morning when there is good visibility, and behind the lines at the headquarters of the divisions engaged there was an air of tranquillity which did not suggest the morning of a battle. The truth is that the enemy was so utterly ut-terly surprised and the Australians so perfectly successful that the whole action was completed in an hour or so after its start.- Hundreds of prisoners had been sent down under escort and the record of the brilliant little victory was already being be-ing written. Tanks Do Good Work. The tanks which co-operated with the infantry were one of the main causes of the surprise and overthrow of the Ger-' Ger-' man defender, the German prisoners including in-cluding a battalion commander and two adjutants, very sick men because they are now in our hands. They confess that up to 3 o'clock this morning they had not the faintest idea they were going to bo attacked. Our artillery in this region was very strong and their fire so planned that Immediately the attack -opened it would neutralize the enemy's guns while the infantry advanced. This indeed is what happened and at eight minutes past 3 this morning, when the bombardment opened with an intense drum fire and with concentrated counter-battery work, the German artillery reply was so late and so feeble that the Australians were well on their way to their last objectives objec-tives before the first shells fell on the old German front line. The enemy holdiDg the ground south of Vaux sur Somme and garrisoning the village vil-lage of Hamel and Vairwood and the trench system on the other side of Hamel belonged to three divisions of Prussians and Rhinelanders. Those divisions were the. Forty-third. Seventy-seventh and Thirteenth. The last of whom were men of the Rhine, having come down lately to this sector from, the area around Lens. Awful Artillery Fire. They had been suffering from Ihe prevailing pre-vailing epidemic of influenza and hoped for a rather quiet time, but were kept on tenterhooks by the presence of the Australians in front of them, who do not give their enemies much peace. There was the usual amount of harassing fire from our guns in the early part of the night, neither more nor less than that, and the Australian brigade took up their assembly places in a dead quietude, doing their host to prevent any sound of human movement from alarming the men on the other side of No Man's Jand. They were i all on the top note of confidence and en-j en-j thusiastic in believing that victory was going to be easy and quick as soon as the guns got to work. At one place in the front German earlh- COoniimied on Pag TweJvB.) "hamel is captured WrTH-1500 6ERMMB (Continued from Page Eight.) of Mou!ins-sous-Touvent the enemy was repulsed in a counter-attack on our front lines: for the rest his attack at-tack broke down in front of our entanglements. en-tanglements. Kresh enemy attacks west of Chateau Thierry broke down. A strong enemv attack on the east bank of the Meuse was repulsed. In the Sundgau we captured prisoners in successful raids. |