CROISILLES TAKEN BY BRITISH TROOPS

DISPIRITED GERMANS

From PHILIP GIBBS. WAR CORRESPONDENTS’ HEADQUARTERS, FRANCE, Wednesday.

When I went up into the battle area this morning south-east of Arras, the enemy was shelling Monchy and the high ground beyond, and his long-range crumps burst and left black trails of smoke in the wet air, like those from a factory chimney. Beyond, along the Wancourt Ridge, it seemed very quiet, and when I travelled southwards past the line of Mercatel and Neuville-vitasse, which are now in our hands again, after brief possession by the enemy, no single shell came over the Croisilles Ridge, which overlooks the village of Croisilles, which was entered by English troops yesterday, and over to Bullecourt, upon which they advanced today. I was with officers of these troops when the attack was renewed at half-past twelve this morning. We were standing amidst the wreckage of old trenches and huts left behind in the wake of all this fighting, when a hurricane bombardment opened from all our guns. Our batteries were scattered about over a wide area, which includes the newly captured villages of Boiry-becquerelle and Boyelles, and many heaps of ruins, which were once hamlets and farmsteads and cottages, all smashed to bits, and groups of Nissen huts broken to matchwood, and twisted iron and railway lines flung wildly over the fields, and the indescribable litter of this fighting zone. It had been raining hard, and the sky was heavy with stormclouds, beneath which along the crests of high ground the sun shone with a white, gleaming light. It sparkled on the rain-washed ruins, with their white chalk, and upon the waterproof capes of men marching along the tracks behind the lines, and upon field batteries moving forward with their transport.