New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915: April-September, 1915Various
History
New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915: April-September, 1915
Various
World War, 1914-1918
This advertisement, occupying full pages, was recently run in the
British press.
The British Army in France
Richebourg, La Quinque Rue, Festubert, and Ypres
By the Official "Eyewitness" and Sir John French
SAXONS SLAIN BY PRUSSIANS.
_Under date of May 21, 1915, an Eyewitness with the British
Headquarters in France, continues and supplements his narrative of
operations:_
The ground our troops were holding on Monday, May 17, projected as two
salients into the enemy's territory, one south of Richebourg-L'Avoue
and the other to the north of Festubert. The purpose of the operations
undertaken on Monday was to connect up the space which lay between
them. In this we were successful.
At about 9:30 A.M. on Monday, May 17, our forces attacked the enemy
occupying this area, from north and south, and gradually drove him
from all his intrenchments within it. The Germans here, pressed on
three sides, subjected to a cross-fire from several directions and to
continuous bombing, reached the limits of their endurance during the
morning, and over 300 surrendered.
After this area had been made good by us fighting continued throughout
the day, and our troops, having joined hands, pressed the enemy still
further eastward, forcing them out of one post after another. As the
afternoon wore on more prisoners fell into our hands, entire groups of
men giving themselves up.
The centres of the hostile resistance in this quarter were the
clusters of buildings which were very strongly held and surrounded by
networks of trenches dotted with numerous machine gun posts, and in
front of one of the nests of works near the Ferme Cour de L'Avoue,
between La Quinque Rue and Richebourg-L'Avoue, a horrible scene was
witnessed by our troops during the day.
Desperate fighting was going on in front of this farm when the remains
of a battalion of Saxons, which, it appears, had been hastily brought
down from further north and thrown into the fight, having decided to
surrender en bloc, advanced toward our line. Not knowing what the
movement of this mass of men implied, our infantry poured a hail of
bullets into them, whereupon the survivors, some hundreds strong,
halted, threw down their rifles, and held up their hands, and one of
their number waved a white rag tied to a stick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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