OCR Text |
Show DESCRIBES RUINS ! WAKE Of BATTLE i Villages Captured by Brit-1 ish Are Wrecks and Filled With German Dead. PARES, July 7, 5:40 p.m. A French official observer describing conditions in the village of Frieourt after it had been : taken by the British in the recent advance ad-vance north of the So mine, gays: "Frieourt, as did Montauban, pre-1 sented a spectacle in ruina, which were j in a state of such complete disorder as to show the power of the new British heavy guns. It now is tho Germans' turn to pulverize the ruins and they are destroying what remains of the shattered shat-tered relics. "Everywhere are dead. Behind a demolished de-molished parapet, a German grenadier still holds a grenade clutched in his dead hand. Farther along is a group of three German infantrymen, torn 1o pieces by shells and then half covered by falling walls. In every corner and in the holes are dead, and still more dead. "The battle continues not far off and grenade fighting is going on. We plainly plain-ly hear the repeated explosions of these projectiles. German shells keep falling without cessation on the western end of the village. ' ' Back of the firing line we come across a group of prisoners from tho One Hundred and Eighty-sixth regiment of Prussian infantry, of which an entire en-tire battalion has surrendered. We pause to interrogate them. I put the following questions to them: " Where were you before coming here ? ' " 'In the Champagne facing Tahure. ' "'How did you come north?' " 'By train two days ago.' " 'Why did you surrender so quickly?' quick-ly?' "e were without shelter and the artillery tore our ranks to pieces. We felt ourselves to be in such a complete state of inferiority that nothing remained re-mained but to surrender. We then made a hasty decision and raised the white flag.' " 'Did your commanders tell you of this offensive?' " 'No. When wo started we believed we were going to Verdun. It was only when we were on the way that we learned that we were to fight against the English.' " 'Are 3'ou satisfied to be out of the fight?' "The answer was given enthusiastically enthusias-tically in the affirmative." Describing the character of the new Kitchener army which took part in the battle, the observer gives the following statement by a British officer: "Three quarters of my battalions are : of the recently formed army. Only one ! of my battalions belongs to tho old army, and yet when the test of battle came my new battalions could not be distinguished from the old. They maneuvered ma-neuvered with tho same sureness and they moved with the oxpertness of veterans. vet-erans. This homogeneity of the old and the new pleased me greatly. Chiefs of other brigades had the same experience. The Germans had thought that this new , army was a lot of amateur soldiers, but ; they found themselves deceived.'' |