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Show IL S. II HE STRONCKHTS Victory Big in Wresting From Foe North End of Argonne Forest. Eitter Fighting Occurs; German Positions Are Nearly Impregnable;. By EDWIN L. JAMES. Nev York Timen-Chicago Tribune Cab'e. Copyright. ) WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY, Oct. 7. A furious battle has been in progress ;i It day for i he possession of the north end of th forest of Argonne. 'ij;e Americans attacked from the east and sou'h this morning. After a da.- of bitter fighting they have driven the Germans Ger-mans from the heights west of the Aire a: ley, commanding the Argonne forest from our line to the end of the jungle at Grand Pre. Thes heights include hills l'4u. J44 and on the crests of whkh our troops have dug in. This is the best advance we have made against the Argonne stronghold since the drive the First American army started on the morning of September 26. ' Our a'tack this morning was started by troops on lhe Flevllle line, five kilometers southward, south-ward, the troops moving due west. A short time after this attack started, a t 6:S0, troops holding the line through the forest attacked north ward. Men Cut Wire. We used liltie artillery preparation, but pur down a heavy barrage ahead of our men. This fire, while doing considerable damage to German communications, did not succeed In cutting the wire, because thick woods deflected the shells to a great extent.' Heavy wire entanglements had to be cut by the advancing infantry. The tanks, of course, could not be used in the attack in the forest-. Our attack was aided by a heavy mist w hich enabled us to get upon the German positions before being seen. This precipitated pre-cipitated a large amount of hand-to-hand fighting. The mist later developed into a roM ra in which still eon tl mips. I regard it impossible to exaggerate the difficulties of our task in taking the Ar-1 Ar-1 gonne forest, so long regarded as impregnable. im-pregnable. Today it was over terrain just captured, which is like that on which the fighting took place today. The boche has thousands of steel and concrete positions, posi-tions, machine guns, innumerable trenches running in all directions through jungles, and has built many funnel-shaped positions posi-tions commanded by nests of machine guns. Fie is fighting with desperation against the Americans, determined to wrest from him the prized stronghold. Hun Losses Heavy. The Germans gave up Chatel Cheherv without a strong fight, making their stand on the crest of the heights north of the Aire valley. Our men, using shell holes and tree stumps as shields, wormed their way uphill, and, leaping into the German trenches, routed t,he boche. with heavy losses to him. Meanwhile, the infantry in-fantry elements had filtered through the three ravines and caught the retreating Germans with machine-gun fire. We organized our newly won positions on the Aire heights and pushed down the western slopes of the hills, where we met , wdth varying success, our troops being 1 withdrawn tonight to organize the line. j In the fighting we took prisoners and captured some artillery, which included one Belgian field piece and a large number num-ber of machine guns. Because of bad weather aerial activity was greatly hampered. There is little artillery activity activ-ity in this army sector, except in the Argonne Ar-gonne region. Both sides did considerable artillery work. |
