"It was estimated by the Russians that the Germans lost 60,000 men. I
was told by an officer that the bodies of German soldiers were piled up
before the Russian trenches in many of the assaults so high that German
shells bursting among them threw mangled pieces of human beings into the
trenches among the Russians.
"At night, under the glare of search-lights, the undulating mass of
wounded made efforts to extricate themselves. Then, toward 2 o'clock in
the morning, they moved no more." The winter cold had done its deadly
work.
FRENCH MAKE GAINS IN MARCH
In the Champagne country of northern France the month of March was
marked by almost continuous fighting of the fiercest character. French
advices from Chalons-sur-Marne on March 29 were to the effect that
11,000 German dead had been taken from the trenches won by the French in
the previous twenty days and that the total German losses during that
time in the Champagne district exceeded 50,000 in killed, wounded and
prisoners.
STIRRING EVENTS OF THE SPRING
All through the month of April the days were crowded with important
occurrences east and west along the battle lines. The Russian movement
across the Carpathians was pressed with vigor and some of the fiercest
fighting of the war resulted, as the combined German and Austrian troops
resisted the Russian advance into Hungary.
Early in the spring the British forces gained a notable victory at
Neuve Chapelle in the western theater of war. Then the German forces
in Flanders were heavily reinforced until it was estimated that they
numbered not less than half a million men, gathered for the purpose of
smashing the line of the Allies at the strategic point where the British
and the Belgian troops were in touch with one another. Here, for three
days, the Germans succeeded in pushing forward, driving a wedge for
several miles into the line of the allied armies of England, France
and Belgium. And here, too, the Canadian division of the British army
covered itself with glory and once more demonstrated the value to the
British empire of the "lion's whelps." On one notable occasion, destined
to be recorded in history as a red-letter day for Canadian arms, the
gallant fellows from the great Dominion "saved the situation," to quote
from the report of Field Marshal French, by a splendid charge, during
which they recaptured from the Germans four of their field guns that had
been lost the day before.
HOW CANADIAN COMMANDER DIED LEADING YPRES CHARGE
_From Sir Max Aitken's official account of the battle of Ypres._
"It did not seem that any human being could live in the shower of shot
and shell which began to play on the advancing troops. They suffered
terrible casualties. For a short time every other man seemed to fall,
but the attack was pressed even closer and closer. The 4th Canadian
battalion at one moment came under a particularly withering fire. For a
moment it wavered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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