AUSTRALIANS’ COUP AT HAMEL VILLAGE.

ENEMY SURPRISED.

By their surprise attack this morning the Australians have taken possibly 1,500 prisoners in an advance of one and a half mile on a four-mile front, including the village of Hamel and the trench system beyond it, south of the Somme. Their own

losses are astonishingly light. The enemy was so utterly surprised, and the Australians were so perfectly successful, that the whole action was completed an hour or so after its start. The Tanks co-operated with the infantry, and were one of the main causes of the surprise and overthrow of the German defenders. The German prisoners, including a battalion commander and two adjutants, had not the faintest idea that they were going to be attacked. When the bombardment opened with intense drumfire, and with concentrated battery work, the German artillery reply was so late and so feeble that the Australians were well on their way to their last objectives before the first shells fell on the old German front line. The enemy holding the ground south of Vaux-sursomme belonged to three divisions of Prussians and Rhinelanders. They had been suffering from the prevailing epidemic of influenza and were not intending to attack us, hoping for a quiet time, but were kept on tenterhooks by the presence of the Australians in front of them, who do not give their enemies much peace.

SMOKE SCREEN FOR TANKS.

The moment when the infantry were to move was 3.10, and two minutes before then the drumfire began with a deafening roar. Under this widespread flight of shells – the bombardment extended over a wide front – the tanks started forward. Smoke-screens were sent- up in front of them in dense clouds, which lay low on the ground, to hide them from the German anti-tank guns, and into this fog they went, nosing their way at a steady pace, besides the officers and crews shut up inside their steel walls working, the engines and the guns, there were three or four men sitting on top utterly exposed. Their legs dangled over the sides of the tanks like those of boys going for a joy-ride, and in this way they rode into hell-fire, as it seemed to men watching them, because of the smokescreens and the flashes of the shells beyond. The infantry followed in waves, loose, open lines of men bending forward as they went close to the barrage rolling slowly on ahead of them, so close that they took the risk of being wounded by our own fire, but preferred this risk to the more deadly one of lagging behind and giving time for German machine-gunners to get to work. All this battle happened in a kind of twilight. In this halflight, fogged over certain lines by the smokewreaths, the Australians made their way shouting for the enemy to surrender. In most cases the Germans gave no trouble, but held their hands up meekly, and came out of their trenches and dug-outs huddling together without weapons, and showing no sign of fight.

ENEMY SURRENDER.

Above the fog and in the pale sky over this battlefield flew many aeroplanes. They were like a swarm of hats over the heads of the infantry and swooped low to drop bombs on the German positions. They flung many bombs into the ruined village of Hamel, making a hell of the place, and lighting fires there in advance of the assault. Many of the Germans had their gas-masks on when they came out of holes in the ground and held their hands up because they believed that the smokeclouds sent over to screen the tanks were poison gas. During all this first phase of the attack there was hardly a sign from the German artillery, kept very silent by the concentrated fire of our batteries, and the Australians were able to wander over their captured ground in great ease, and every man among them searched for a prisoner whom he could claim as his very own. It was a great day for the Australians, and this morning I found their officers merry and bright, though most had had no sleep and had an anxious day ahead of them. “The joy of the thing,” said one of them. “is that we have taken the initiative again, and that is much better than waiting for attack. Our men have their tails waving over their heads and the Germans are very down to-day.” This brilliant success has come to us on American Independence Day, which has a deeper significance for us now that the American soldiers are so strong on the soil of France.