FIERCE BATTLE ON THE SCARPE

VAIN GERMAN SACRIFICES

From Philip Gibbs. British Headquarters (France), Wednesday Evening.

The enemy is still making violent efforts to gain back Roeux, north of the Scarpe, and the part which he recently lost of Bullecourt, on the Hindenburg line near Quéant, two places where for four weeks men have fought on both sides in a daily struggle so deadly that the ground thereabouts is heaped with bodies. It is impossible to go into either place on a visit of inspection. All that I have seen is a fringe of dead and mutilated trees above a rising slope of ground, showing where Bullecourt Wood once grew green in the springtime, and north of the Scarpe along the ArrasCambrai road, the sweep down from Oppy and Gavrelle to the chemical works below Greenland Hill, where the enemy has his observation posts. Every day for those four weeks great numbers of guns have concentrated their fire on the two villages, far apart from each other, but threatening the enemy’s present line of defence with equal menace. Some days they have been shells from our guns, smashing there under pillars of smoke. Sometimes they have been German guns hurling high explosives hour after hour over the tunnels and dugouts from which his men have been posted, and where our men stay in small groups with machine-guns and rifle grenades to check the next German counterattack or to die in holding their posts. The chemical works at Roeux, a few bits of broken wall with a litter of iron and barbed wire, have changed hands so often that when officers in other parts of the line ask for the latest news of this place one must be sure of what happened an hour or two ago before giving an answer. Yesterday, all Roeux was ours, the chemical works beyond the station, where many prisoners were taken; the chateau, with its huge dugouts and machinegun emplacements ; the cemetery, from which a great tunnel runs westward to Mount Pleasant Wood; and the village of Roeux itself, into which some Irish and English soldiers wandered by error before the real attack, bringing back with them the regimental staff officers captured in the headquarters dugouts. Our men established machinegun posts in the old German emplacements, dug defensive trenches, and cleaned out the dugouts, in which dead Germans lay. There can hardly have been a patch of ground between the shell craters and the rubbishheap of houses and barns on which there was not a German corpse. Here lie some of those Silesians destroyed in the counter-attack which came from Plouvain on May 5; and many Bavarians bayoneted by the Scottish troops, who fought clean through the chemical works and beyond, before the end of April; and Prussian soldiers of the 362nd Regiment, who were killed a night or two ago. Among them lie men of ours with tartans which show they were those Scots who held out here in isolated posts when 2,000 Germans hurled themselves against Roeux two weeks ago, and for a time recaptured it, and the boys of South Country England who assaulted this ground, and the Irishmen who, in a thin line, formed a defensive flank on the night of May 12, wondering what would happen to them if the enemy attacked in heavy numbers, before they were supported. Some day, when the nightmare of this war has passed, and the enemy has gone back to his own place, the sons of men now fighting will come to Roeux as to a sepulchre where the dust of heroes lies; for all this place is a graveyard, though no dead lie quiet there yet. Living men are fighting there again, amidst all that mortality.

ENEMY ATTACKS AT ROEUX

After a terrible shellfire last night the enemy again attacked this morning in dense numbers. It seems that his High Command will not leave Roeux in our hands, though to retake it and lose it again they have sacrificed numbers of gallant men. To-day’s fighting here has begun this story of blood all over again. It has piled new dead on old dead. It has refilled the cup of agony which has overflowed round these heaps of brickwork and tattered timbers. The German soldiers came up in waves, and some of them penetrated our advanced posts and barricades, in spite of our machine-gunners, who raked them as they came. There has been desperate fighting with bayonet and bomb at close quarters, without mercy on either side. Our men have counterattacked, thrust the enemy back, and gained more ground than he held before. Roeux is ours again, I believe all of it, and once more the enemy staff officers at Plouvain or further back have had to report a disastrous failure. Our men fought fiercely and grimly to hold their ground, worked their machineguns though there were only one man left out of a team, and after the German breakthrough rallied a counterattack which swept back that advancing mob of men. That is certain, because of the troops who are there. So it has happened at Roeux and down at Bullecourt. That or flaming hell, it has been the same.