The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1915-09-10

British Headquarters in France,
Sept. 9.-The British have retaken the
mine-crater at HODGE in one of the
most picturesque actions seen along
the British front for long time.
Hooge is the name of what was once
village in region as fiat as bill
lard table. It is in the Ypres salient,
where, it is generally agreed, more
blood has been spilled than over any
similar length Of line on the western
front with the exception of Souchez,
where the French made their first at
tack in May and June.
The blowing up of mine under the
German trench recently made Hooge
about, the hottest place in the Ypres
salient. It was one of the largest
mines the British have exploded, and
it made hole in the earth about forty
feet deep and seventy feet across. The
British charged and took possession of
the position.
Flame EjectOr Used.
In reply to the mine, the Germans
brought up their fame-ejector appar-
atus which they had tried on the
French before but now used on the
British for the first time. Around the
edge of the mine-crater the English
men and the Germans were, at one
place, only five feet apart. The era
ter was so big and it had so disfgured
the landscape that it was difficult to
consolidate" the position, as the off,
cial bulletins say particularly when
showers Of bombs from either side
punished any enterprise on the part
of the other.
On top of bombardment of all the
neighboring part of the British line
where the trenches were farther apart
and of bombardment with mortars and
bombs where they were close together,
the Germans suddenly sprayed the
British front with fire over a section
where their infantry attacked. The
British had to give up their crater
and Hooge too and some five hundred
yards of trenches. When they set out
to recover the lost ground at first they
found the Germans had the line bristl-
ing with machine-guns, so they re-
gained only one end of what they had
lost.
Fighting Desperate.
The rule in the Ypres salient seems
to be never to lie down tamely after
any setback. Both sides fight to re-
cover loss no matter what the cost.
Sanguinary battles are waged for few
acres of ground. All one day the
British kept an almost continuous
roar Of shells over other parts of the
salient. They made the German
trenches boil with dust under clouds
of shrapnel-smoke. The German guns
replied. They threw in some more
seventeen-inch shells into the ruins
of Ypres and into other points which
they had not considered worthy of
seventeen-inch before. The thunders
of this artillery duel could be heard
thirty to forty miles to the rear. 1t
made sound like the roll of drum
with almost no interval between the
shots. Nothing heavier had been
heard since Souchez.
About 200 the next morning guns
which had been silent before came in
to action. They were all directed on
the German trenches at Hooge, send
ing tons of high explosives and storms
of shrapnel. Then at Ais by all the
watches of gunners and infantry men
the guns stopped. The next minute
British major at the head of battal-
ion line leaped over the parapet. AS
he said, he found nobody at home"
The Germans were in their dug-outs
according to the custom on such oc-
casions taking shelter from the lorna
do of shell fire which makes even a
lookout hardly possible. Turning the
corner of a traverse, the major fairly