| OCR Text |
Show BRITISH POUND GERMAN LINES Drumming of Artillery Continues Contin-ues Night and Day, Keeping Casualty List Growing. With the Rrltish Armies In France, Jan 11, via London, Jan 12, 5 40 8 m Through rain. mist, fog and deep mud the F.rttlsh army is continuing day by day to pound the German linos Although there has been no distinctly spectacular action recently, dally and nightly trench raids and the drumming of the artillery have continued con-tinued These operations have yielded yield-ed a constant Inflow of prisoners and have kept the casualty lists growing According lo the stories told by the prisoners, the British tactics have harassed the German troops almost bi J ond endurance. The last week has witnessed some typical so-called minor operations, culminating with an attack before dawn today north of Beaumont Hamel. This action brought the total of prls oners taken In this area In the last threo days to 300 and placed in British Brit-ish hands some important sections of trenches. On Tuesday night the Brit lsh attacked a desired section of the German lines which was taken with a j leld of 140 prisoners The operations opera-tions this morning drove I ho Germans from a position which they hud held for some time and from which the could observe part of the rtrlti.sh line. The attack was preceded by the usual artillery preparation, which a a matter of fact, had been going on for nearly a week but had grown par ticularly severe in the last 48 hours. Just before dawn the British "went over." Ahead of them, in that dark-i dark-i s1 hour before the sun rose, was the ' fiery curtain of shells from the guns ; far in the rear. The sodden stretch of No Man's Land over which they plodded was lit by the glare of the exploding shells As the barrage crept steadily forward the men followed fol-lowed it so closely that the spectator momentarily expected them to be smashed by the fire of their own guns. , Red rockets from tbe German trench- es flashed signals for aid to the defending de-fending guns in the rear, but the counter barrage failed to check the advance. Ihe German gunfire in this Instance was described by the attack- Ij ing officers as weak and erratic. Ihe British soldiers encountered little resistance was described by the shell-torn trenches. The Germans had taken refuge from the terrible shell fire in the dugouts and communicating communi-cating trenches. The prisoners taken 1 In this raid had been on the front line for a long while and appeared very J much dejected. As soon as the captured cap-tured trenches had been cleared of the last hostile fighter, squads of engineers en-gineers were sent into consolidate and repair the now positions and before j night the regular booming of the big guns told that the battle had once more settled down into its customary j |
