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Show HAKE BIG DENT IN GERMAN LINE BRITISH DRIVE TEUTONS BACK ON FRONT OF ELEVEN MILES IN SOMME REGION. Claim to Have Taken Thirty Thousand ! Prisoners, Captured Twenty-one Villages Vil-lages and Taken Many Guns Without With-out Loss of a Gun. , London. More than, three and one-iialf one-iialf months o( battle on the Somme, With the hfavlest concentration of artillery, ar-tillery, Infantry and every type of war material and the most skillful and desperate des-perate fighting the world has ever known, has resulted In marked development devel-opment of British fighting efficiency and of means for reducing the losses of the attackers. In the way of concrete achievements the. British have taken 3M.0UU prisoners, prison-ers, or a little less than 1,500 for each of the twenty-one villages captured, with an average population of about 300 souls. They have taken 125 guns, 10!) trench mortars and trench guns and 420 machine guns. They have not. lost a gun. The British have driven back the Germans on a front of eleven miles, to a depth of four to eight miles. Former citizens of captured villages are requesting re-questing that they be allowed to return re-turn to them and build new homes on the ruins of their old ones. The offensive has consisted of Intervals In-tervals of preparation and siege work after each big general attack, to prepare pre-pare what Is called a "jumping off" place for another general attack. Through July, owing to the heavy cost of taking the first line trenches, the British casualties were probably heavier heav-ier than the German. Through August, when over a large part of the front the Germans were out of their second as well as their first lino system of de-lenses, de-lenses, and the battle became one of digging and fighting in the open for both sides, casualties were about even. Yet from all information the correspondent corre-spondent can gain, tne German losses were not less than 25 and posibly 50 per cent higher than the British during dur-ing September, when the British gairred most ground. |