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Show oo Attack East of Mease Made to Restore 1916 Lkei T- , PARIS, Wednesday, Oct. 9. The at-1 tack east of the Meuse begun Tuesday I by the French supported by the Amer-1 icans had one main result in view. I That was to restore the battle line 1 west of the Mouse to the place where 1 it was when the Germans began their attack against Verdun in 1916. The plan also was to clear the right bank 1 of the Meuse of enemy guns which had ' been causing considerable trouble ! and ajso to secure from the enemy cer-; tain valuable observation points j The operation was very successful. ' The enemy seemingly was taken by surprise. He had massed his troops and guns further east in strongly fortified forti-fied positions, leaving the Austro-Hungarlans Austro-Hungarlans to hold the point where i the main attack was delivered. There was no artillery preparation, despite I the fact that a normally sustained artillery ar-tillery fire had been necessary to re-duce re-duce the mass of wire which the enemy ene-my had built in front of and between his lines virtually in the Bois de Caures. The nature of the terrain forbade the use of tanks. Therefore, the attack at-tack was unique because it broke through strongly wired permanent positions po-sitions solely by the clement of surprise sur-prise and dash. The German batteries batter-ies to the east, which might have hindered hin-dered the advance, were smothered by the American artillery at the moment the forward movement began. The advance of the French and Americans was made behind n rolling barrage. It was so sudden and fierce that many of tho Auslro-Hungarians wore taken in their shelters. Their officers said in the absence of preliminary prelim-inary artillery preparations they did not expect an attack and had no idea that the Franco-Amoricana were coming com-ing until they were among thcm.-Thl? operation itself was secondary to the larger events that were transpiring on other sectors. It, however, has aided largely in further releasing Verdun from the enemy menace: About 4000 prisoners werp taken. Today the Gor-: Gor-: mans rushed up reinforcements and delivered counter-attacks. These were unsuccessful. oo |