The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-28
BODIES OF GERMANS DOT THE YSER CANAL
 FOLLOWING BATTLE
Very Water Itself Bloody as Result of Violent Fighting Says Eyewitness in
 Describing Scene

London, October 27.-(5:5s q. m.)--The correspondent of the Daily Mail in north ern France telegraphng under date of sunday night regarding the fighting on the Yser canal. says:
 There were 25O0 German bodies in the Yser canal this morning after the fight ing in the night. Many of them were drowned, and others were bayonetted The very water itself was bloody while Dixmudes streets were strewn thick with the dead
 These ghoulish facts alone give some foea or the savageness of the fighting, the desperation of the German attacks and the stubbornness of the alles' resistance
 ''The night was a hell from dark to dawn. At almost every point of the line, man was opposed by man. sometimes at few hundred yards distant, but more often in close grips. Face to face, men even wrestled and died by drowning each other in the canals waters. The Ger mans had had orders to get through that night. cost what it might.
 Military Mind Incensed
 An officer of theirs who was cap- tured. said that the delay of more than week in crossing this waterway had in- censed the autocratic military mind in Gefmany. It must be crossed tonight If It costs thousands of men. That, in ef- feet. was the order given, and the Ger man soldiers, all credit to them, did their best
 Probably 5000 of them gave their lives last night. They could not give moro, yet they failed, but not because the Ger mans did not literally obey their orders. Ihey crossed the waterway all right as they were bid, but once through, they could not make good They were moved down with rifle shot, torn into human fragments by shells, and bayonetted backward yard by yard over their own dead into water of the canal. Into th.. gray of the morning this bloody work went on so fiercely that there was hardly trencn or bridge guard on the whole nnes that did not imagine that he had been singled out for special attack.
 It Is believed that some 5000 Ger mans crossed the River Yser, but hardly one or them got back. Those of the north and northeast of Dixmude. probably 2OOO. were met by fine rally of the Belgian Infantry and of the cavalry. who had tethered their horses, and were driven by main force at the bayonet's point to the river canal and into it. There must have been frantic scenes and the bodies seen in the water on the next day gave grim testimony of this
 Infantrymen Wiped Out
 About 5000 German inrantrymen got into Dixmude. They held 1t for a time. but with shell fire and rifle fire. the place was riddled through and through. The Germans dashed out of the crum- bling houses only to be wiped out by a sirocco of shrapnel and shot in the street.
 When Sunday morning broke, the dead and wounded were everywhere. Dix nude was a cemetery, but in the thick cts not Tar away the Germans still lin- gered. They held a position under a des- perate fire and eventually were rein forced. The allies could not oust them. and the Germans are still across the Yser.
 Their presence may not be permanent. and they may suffer the same fate as has overcome hundreds of their fellow soldiers during the week who got over only to gather death, but the Belgian and French lines for the time being at least have been drawn back about this point"