Catoctin clarion. [volume] (Mechanicstown, Md.) 1871-1940, 1914-11-19
Correspondent Describes Mid
night Battle on the User.
Savage and Desperate Fighting. Men
Struggling Hand to Hand in the
Water-Dixmude Cemetery

London.-The correspondent of the
Daily Mail in Northern France, tele-
graphing regarding the lighting on
the River User, says:
There are $500 German bodies in
the User canal this morning after the
fighting in the night Many of them
were drowned and others were bay
oneted. The water itself was bloody,
while DiXmudes streets were strewn
thick with the dead.
These ghouish facts alone give
some idea of the savageness OF the
fighting, the desperation Of the Ger
man attacks and the stubbornness Of
the allies resistance.
The night was hell from dark to
dawn. AT almost every point OF the
line man was opposed by man. some
times at few hundred yards dis
tance, but more often in close grips
Face to face, men even wrestled and
died by drowning each other in the
canals waters. The Germans had had
orders to get through that night, cost
what it might.
AN officer of theirs, who was cap
tured, said that the delay of more
than a week in crossing this water
way has incensed the military mind in
Germany.
Probably 5000 of them gave their
lives last night. They could not give
more, yet they failed, but not because
the Germans did not literally obey
their orders. They crossed the water
way but once through they could not
make good. They were moved down
with rifle shot, torn into human frag-
ments by shells and bayoneted back
yard by yard over their own dead into
the waters of the canal.
Into the very gray of the morning
this bloody work went on so fiercely
that there was hardly trench or
bridge guard in the whole line that
did not imagine that he had been sim
gled out for special attack.
Those who crossed the river to
the north and northeast of DiXmude,
probably 1000 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
canal and into it.
About three thousand German in
fantrymen got into Dixmude. They
held it for a time, but with shell fire
and rifle the place was riddled through
and through. The Germans dashed
out of the crumbling houses only to
be wiped out by shrapnel
when Sunday morning broke the
dead and wounded were everywhere.
Dixmude was a cemetery but in the
woods not far away the Germans lin
gered They held a position under a
desperate fire and eventually were re-
enforced The allies could not oust
them and the Germans are still across
the Yser.'
The Daily Nails correspondent near
the User river, under date of Sunday,
dilating on the ferocity of the German
attempts to get across the river, says:
"In one night Friday, between mid
night and dawn, seven different on
slaughts were repulsed. Swarms Of
Germans rushed up with newly-made
bridges of wood. They were dropped
across the canal and, notwithstand-
ing the deadly fire from rifles and
mitrailleuses, the Germans burst
across. There was no stopping them.
This sort of thing has happened
day after day but in the daylight
that followed each night these ma
rauders were hunted and moved
down. Great patches were killed
crowds were taken prisoners, but that
mattered nothing, the next night
was sure to bring along more attacks
OF the same kind"