The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-09-16

ing of Friday as the best day for the British arms since the offensive be- gan on the Somme front. With the exception of July l, the attack begun yesterday morning was the most ex- tensive of any in the ten weeks of the battle. For the first time new armor- ed motor cars of ingenious pattern suitable for the purpose, accompanied the infantry as the British swept down from the ridges to the lower German lines. At this writing the British are beyond the village of Flers. which they took early in the morning and are established in Mar tinpuioh and Courcelettc.
 The slow. plodding work, of recent weeks which included the taking O. Ginchy and Guillemont, had for it's object control of all the high ground from the region of Thiepval to the Junction with the French on the right The Germans fought hard for every foot of 1t. Delville, or Del's Wood, High Wood and the rib of earth which the windmill crowned beyond Pozieres, have been steeped with blood of men fallen there in their long stand under the heaviest shellfire in the history of the war as experts agree, as German wrestled with Br1ton, not for a piece of farm land but for a mastery. The Brit ish push was largely downfall. They put behind them the high ground whose slopes give them shelter for their guns and whose crest gives them observation for their artillery fire. Evidently the Germans did not expect the attack, considering that the offensive was over and that the British would settle down for the win- ter in their new and advantageous positions.
 Never before, probably, have more guns been playing over the same length of front than along the six miles where the British made their advance on July 1 and where they have continued their offensive with dogged persistence. The Germans kept on bringing up guns until now they have one thousand in this short sector. The Associated Press cor respondent, moving overt the region of the devastated villages and she'll torn earth, intersected by new roads, saw on Thursday how enormously the British had increased their own ar tillery.
 Sun-tanned and weather-beaten were the gunners, after their 10 weeks of work. There were lines and clus- ters and parks Of guns. Rows of bat teries were firing with something of the regularity of mechanical work manship of the needles of a loom weaving cloth. Alongside each other were British and French fighters. The gunners of neither ally could speaR the language of the other, yet both were going on with their parts &C., cordihg to instructions
 At midnight the correspondent again walked about among the guns which were going on with their night shift of gunners. whose figures were illuminated by flashes. Except for the guns, which know no rest, the army seemed silent and asleep for the most part. Everybody and ev- erything was in place. ready, includ- ing those of the strange grotesque new armored cars which were to have their baptism of fire in the morn irg.
 We keep on learning. we of the rev army" said one of the young officers, land with every show do a little better. Battle is the great teacher"
 And the guns never stopped their ear-racking noise from daylight to darkness and darkness to dawn. But before the general attack began there bad been a hellish little preliminary sideshow near ThiepvaL The Ger mans hid in their warrens of deep dugouts and valley which they call ed their Wonder Work Before daylight the British got in there, un- der 6cover of their gunfire, bombed their way through galleries which be- came cattcombs and made themselves master of the position after hours of ugly work.
 Then also. before sun-up, only an hour before the time set for the British attack, the Germans who had no idea the British were coming on in another big push, made small at- tack in the neighborhood of Moquet Farm. They took section of trench and were holding 1t at the moment when that wave of British, six miles long, began to move. The British reserves in that area swept over the Germans and their own men who were struggling with the Germans onto the objective set for three days work.
 A chill autumn morning mist, pre- ceding day of brilliant sunshine, hid the actual attack. which the British officers think was the most skillful the British army has ever made. The British were putting behind them be- hind them not only the ridge but the old second line as we'll as the first line trenches which they struggled so hard to gain and were going a apairst the new third line which the Germans had been held under unceasing British shellfire.
 With the infantry went those new motor cars, across trenches and shell holes. So ludicrous were they in ap- pearance that British soldiers laughed at them in the midst of the charge. They cheered them as they poured forth their streams of machine gun bullets.
 As far as reports indicate the Brit ish gained possession of the new Ger man trenches, except opposite Ginchy There the Germans chung with desper- ate courage and dog-to-bone tenacity to remain on that bit of high ground in that piece-by-piece defense of his. There he still keeps up the struggle, at last accounts.
 Again, in High Wood he had kept redoubt with a nest of machine guns which the armored motor cars en- gagged, machine gun to machine gun, while the British infantry passed around 1t as around a rock in a flood.
 Among the prisoners are six col- onels. One of these had the distinc- Ix