FURNES, Dec. 21, (Dispatch to The London Daily News.)--For several days I have been in possession of an authorization from the French commandant permitting me to penetrate to Nieuport. This town has been under bombardment by the Germans since Oct. 20. There were days, however, when no shells fell in the town and a walk in the streets presented no danger, though this was by no means the case last week, when, after a period of calm, an event of considerable importance occurred. The Allies took up the offensive in an effort to drive the Germans from the coast and recapture Ostend and Zeebrugge. Along the whole front from the Yser to the sea there were important movements of troops. These I am not at liberty to describe, but they have for the most part only a small significance in relation to the events described in this letter. For eight days the struggle has been very severe on the Yser, and night and day hundreds of guns have been sending shells across the space dividing the two armies. Since the end of October the Germans had been established at St. Georges and Lombartzyde, close to Nieuport, and their trenches between Nieuport and Nieuport-les-Bains were separated from those of the French and Belgians only by a canal twenty yards wide running from Furnes through Nieuport to the sea. I left Furnes on a French motor truck carrying bread and meat to the troops at Nieuport. For about three miles the truck followed the canal, passing the village of Wulpen, and then came to a stop. We had arrived near the bridge over which we must pass to reach Nieuport. As we slowly approached the bridge I asked the chauffeur: "What is delaying us?" "It is a little too warm for the moment," he replied. When a soldier admits that things are warm it is certain that there is serious fighting afoot. To the right and left over the fields we could see the inundations. On the roads our soldiers were moving and the guns of the Allies were filling the air with thunder. In the intervals one could hear the spitting of quick-firers and the lesser chorus of rifle fire. Just ahead on a little bridge were a few soldiers of the engineer corps busily at work under the direction of a Lieutenant. Suddenly I saw them fall flat on the ground. At the same moment a shell whistled over their heads and buried itself in the canal bank only forty yards from us. "Shelter your machine behind the house," shouted the Lieutenant, and the chauffeur did not want a second telling. He backed the truck a few yards to place it against a house opposite the bridge at the corner of the road from Ramscapelle. I left the truck and stood with some soldiers close against the wall. In five minutes fifteen shells fell within a radius of 100 yards of the bridge, but not one struck the bridge itself. We could hear them come shrieking toward us, and the only comment of the soldiers each time was "Here comes another."