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Show DRIVE MORE TERRIBLE THAN ALLIES' EXPECTED All British Soldiers Dominated by Grim Resolve That Enemy Shall Not Break Through. By PHILIP GIBBS. (Copyright. L91S, by the New York Times Company.) WAR CORRESPONDENTS' HEADQUARTERS, HEAD-QUARTERS, Monday, April 1. The battle of which I have been trying to give a daily narrative has been on so vast a scale and filled with so many episodes of terrific adventure, and with so many hundreds of thousands thou-sands of men moving along its lines of Are, that I find it impossible to give the picture the emotion and spirit of it. We out here who knew this thing was coming upon us, creeping nearer every dtfy with its monstrous menace, . held our breath and waited. When at last the tiling broke it was more frightful in its loosing of overwhelming overwhelm-ing powers than even we guessed. Armies Exalted by Emotion. Since then all our armies have lived z with an intense understanding of the greatness of these days, of their mean- ing to the destiny of the world, and every private soldier or transport driver or linesman or laborer has been exalted by emotion stronger than the effect of drugs. They do not say much, these men of ours, but there is a queer light in eyes shining out of faces grayed by sleeplessness or streaked with blood. They laugh in the same old way at any joke on the road, and sometimes when shells are bursting close, as I heard bursts of laughter and the crashes of htgh-velocity shells about some groups of men a day or two ago. They go marching up to the battle line with unfaltering feet and with bands leading them to the edge of its flre zone, and it is like a pageant as they pass, these long columns of men in steel hats, shouldering heavy packs with rifles slung, and these miles of transport, and these endless gangs of mule drivers and wagon drivers -and streams of mounted men. One Passion Is to Destroy the Foe. As an onlooker, I have been caught up in these tides for hundreds of kilometers kilo-meters from south to north, and the spirit of these armies on the move was almost visible, and as though all the emotions in these men's hearts were vibrant about men who had just moved up to hold the lines and are hoping for the attack so that they can smash more enemy divisions. Anger moves in them because the enemy en-emy threw us back in places by overwhelming over-whelming odds. Now they swear he will be stopped and broken. Their own losses do not make them mournful. mourn-ful. They wipe out of their minds for the time the horrors and tragedy they have seen. Fierce exultation at the destruction of the enemy, grim pride in repulsing his bloodiest attacks, at-tacks, resolution to pay back and take back has changed the gentlest fellow fel-low into a man who handles his rifle or machine gun with a secret promise to himself ready to stop with his own body another German advance. Passion has taken possession of our men, because they know if the enemy en-emy broke through alt they have fought for would be Jeopardized and this four years of war wouid be in vain for us. That seems to me the only explanation of the things that have been done by the masses of our men, or by small bodies isolated in rear-guard actions astounding things In endurance and sacrifice. Yesterday I saw some of those men (Continued on Page Thirteen.) 'HUH DRIVE' GBBIER I THIS EXPECTED (ContiiLued from Page One ) who had been fighting in the battle' of Arras, Hermes, the scene of the heaviest check the enemy has received re-ceived since March 21, There were some London regiments among them, and their band was playing tattoos as the evening set it. The colonel of their battalion it was a London rifle ri-fle brigade came out after a siecp and wash and shave. All his kits had been lost in the dugout, but he borrowed bor-rowed a razor from bis battery man and nobody would have guessed this smiling man with perfectly brieht eyes and easy manners had just come out of a battle where many of his men fpll around him under frightful shelling, where he had been firing a rifle all day long at crowds of Germans, Ger-mans, and where he had seen dead bodies piled on dead bodies as the enemy en-emy came up in waves against the blasts of our machine gun bullets and the fire of our field artillery. He spoke just a word or two about the Wa ge d y of losing man y of h i s best and bravest men, then put that thought aside and told of their heroic defense and their slaughter of the enemy. Great Slaughter at Arras. It was 4i great slaughter in the battle bat-tle of Arras. From documents found on a German airman brought down in our lines it. is now certain that the 1 enemy had the most ambitious objectives, objec-tives, including the capture of Arras and the turning of Vimy ridge. Two German divisions were holding the line north of the Scarpe from Gav-relle Gav-relle to Oppy and three special shock divisions were assembled to pass through and turn the ridge from the south, while further south one division di-vision was to take the heights east of Arras and a guard division to take Arras itself. After that their objectives objec-tives were indefinite. This battalion of Londoners! were holding the foremost line by a system sys-tem of posts in advance of the battle bat-tle line, among them Mill post, Bradford Brad-ford post and Towie post. The enemy began the battle by concentrating his bombardment on these, while he gassed our support lines and field artillery ar-tillery positions and brought his barrage bar-rage backward and forward over our main defense down there by Gavrelle and Bailleul and Oppy wood. Most of the posts were blotted out utterly. From one. hard by Westminster a small body of men were surrounded by. numbers of the enemy and fought their way back. An officer of the London rifle brigade who had been out since the beginning of the war, says he never saw such an intense bombardment, and when it lifted the Germans came over in close formation, forma-tion, wave after wave. Behind them at some dista nee rode the company commanders on horses, and behind them their field artillery. Each man carried a full pack and an extra pair of belts, as for a long march, and rations for six days. They had not traveled far bet'oVe they were caught by machine gun fire and literally mown clown on the wire. pur field guns made targets of ' them and tore gaps in their waves, fe'ome of them got into our front line, but the London rifipmen pulled down parts of their parapet, made blocks in their trench and kept them back . by bombing and rifle fire. An enemy en-emy battery was unlimbered and the German officers strolled up with sticks" to point out gaps in our wire to their men and were shot down like rabbits. These London men fell back to our main defensive line a short distance to the rear and the enemy never penetrated this, though all da y long- he made fresh efforts from 9:4") in the morning till 7 in the evening. The London men lost many of their comrades in all those hours of bloody, costly fighting, but " by heroic defense they foiled the enemy's en-emy's most ambitious plan. Our ma-" chine, gunners say they were sick of killing, and the colonel of- a rifle brignde used 300 rounds and each bull (A found its mark. London troops on the right of these bore the brunt of the jnftfst formidable attacks on the same methods as those above. The ' Essex men fought like demons, say their officers, in our foremost trenches, and .one body of them sent back messages that they were going to fight to the heath. They did, and not a man came : back. Some Scottish battalions were ' hard pressed and had to withdraw a short distance till nightfall. Since then counter-attacks have restored a good deal ol'ground. All day lon'g our airplanes had reported re-ported that concentrations of German Ger-man troops were pouring down the Arras-Cambrai road, and other routes of march, and our artillery had so many targets they could hardly switch onto them fast enough. The losses were fantastic in their horror. Meanwhile on the right again below be-low the Cambrai road our men were putting up that heroic stand which I . have partly described in other messages. mes-sages. The Suf folks on the Wan-court-Tilloi road fought the enemy both ways, back to back, with Germans Ger-mans on each side of them. Parties of Northumberland fusiliers fought until all of them were killed or wounded. There was a battle of eight hours around battalion headquarters. head-quarters. The company commanders foutrht with rifles until they fell. The Scottish fusiliers at Hen in gave ground slowly under enormous odds, and killed the enemy all the way back. One of our machine gun batteries bat-teries counted 4 00 German dead opposite op-posite their position around NeuviHe1 Vitasse and Honlin hill, and enemy bodies lie in heaps. ' Astounding Adventures. Away from Arras and down on the south of the line a certain body of Can ad in ns have had ' some most astounding adventures in all this battle, bat-tle, and fighting with valor and heroic audacity. They are the officers and men of a machine gun detachment organized in the early days of the war by a French Canadian officer at the expense of himself and ten friends, and with ent huslasm looked 'forward to the day when they would be wanted for the great service. That day came March 21, and when T saw t his French Canadian officer yesterday yester-day a tall. dark, quiet ma n. spea Icing Ic-ing with hidden emotion, he knew Ids idea was justified, and that his officers of-ficers and men bod nVide good io the uttermost limits of gallant service. ser-vice. For ten days these Ca nod ia n cn rs have fought running fights with German Ger-man artillery, have engaged German cavalry and smashed them, checked enemy columns mossing bridecs and pouring downwards, scat tered large liodies of men surrounding ours, and' in tlu-so ten days of crowded life have destroyed many German stnrnr troops and helped to h-'ld up the tide of their advance. Their own losses -are not li.uht. for t hese Ca nad ians ha vc been filled with grim passion, determine.) de-termine.) to die rather than yield tn any odds, and when thn t happened they foucht and d:&d after the first call on March 21 , and orders on the morning of the twenty -second. Eight of t iicso cars were in action the same day P'O kilometers away after a niuht without sleep and o:iar d'M a Chilian is followed them quickly. Sometimes they founht mounted in these lone: cray open e;irs which I saw early in the battle, wonderhii: at fheni.' and sometimes they fought disio inted with maei;Mie c;;ns on the r. ,o:.p,d. in it i alwas thev fnv;ii: throuuri ;;. ;.ti days and nihis, with teau twen ty hoars' sle.-p. a :1 that time. T;:ee ears near Morh-onrt catiierod o-ge;her o-ge;her I."'11 nv:a had hr-en e;ir off and held t i:e enemy at hay. covm irjir emus and tanks. "I":. a t f i me ; fm.i;M di.-inoanie.l with Vh kers cans 4 i , is' , :j I . - i " 7 ' " j " V J Vivian Gosnell, great artist, will smg " Elijah" with the . taBeniacle choii April 5, at 5 p. m. in front of the barb wire to get observation. ob-servation. The enemy front attack was stopped, but he worked around their flanks and the captain of an armored car battery ordered his men behind the wire. The enemy had to come through a narrow gap and was killed as he came. These Canadians had many casualties, and a captain's arm was torn away by an explosive bullet and at the last only a sergeant and two men were left. One of them mounted a motorcycle and brought back cars-and took back the wounded. T wo ca r s f o u n d the ene my massing up the road and their machine guns enfiladed these field gray men and killed them in large numbers. Near Lamotie they fought heavy bodies of German cavalry- Killed a number and put the rest to flight. They ha-e not been seen since. At Cerisy a battalion of Germans 600 strong were encountered at a cross roads, by one car which brought them to a-.saandstill and dispersed them with heavy losses. There was a fierce action ac-tion around Villers Carbon nel, where these armored cars stopped a gap of . 200 yards tinder a Canadian officer wdio was twice surrounded in a village crowded with Germans and fought his way out. At the second time all the crew were killed except the driver, but an officer dismounted, took his gun and posted himself at a street corner and fired on the attacking Germans until they were quite close,-, when he jumped into the car and : drove, away. Our battery in action dismounted, ran out of ammunition, but fought with bombs until these were spent and then charged the enemy with fists and empty revolvers and machine gun barrels. Everybody Helps. Everybody is ready to help these cars and their crews carry their loads, for they know what terrible casual-lies casual-lies they have caused the Huns. At times the enemy, like sheep without a shepherd, walk blindly into their guns,1 only to be mown down. Everywhere -haye been these Canadian armored cars helping to steady the line and give confidence to the infantry. They are the darlings of the troops, these grim fighting fellows with jests on their Hps and utterly reckless of life so long as they kill Germans. One of their .officers is called by the nickname nick-name of "Canada" and a shout of regret went up when it was learned he had been blown off his motorcycle by a shell burst. It is thought, however, how-ever, he is not seriously wounded. |