Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1916-07-03
TERRIFIC STORM
OF CANNON FIRE
COVERS ADVANCE
British Leap From Parapets as
Great Guns Are Turned
Upon Second Line Of
Foe Trenches. a.
LINE IS A HUGE INFERNO
English Front Alive With Furi-
Gus Smelling After Months
|, Of Quiet.
INCREASES IN INTENSITY

June ~ iva London July 81
This week the British front from
the Ypres salient to the Somme is
alive with the most furious gun fire,
in thunderous contrast with the quiet
spring months, when the world was
asking why the British were inactive.
Battery after battery of guns have
been arriving from London and have
been tried out, and this week the cur
itain was lifted on an exhibition Of
their power. The proportion of large
caliber guns, which are so useful, is
large.
The correspondent Travelled from
the northern to the southern end OF
the line with the roar always in
his ear.
Just back OF German first line
trench the village of Beaucourt-Sur.
Ancre, which when last seen had
been unharmed, with its green shade
trees, in a days time had become a
wreck of fallen walls with only few
stumps of trees standing, and still
shells belabored the ruins.
Becomes an Inferno.
All the country between Donchy-
Au-Bois and the Somme was noted
for quiet and where one might not
hear a gun fired for hours had be-
come an inferno and the winding river
Ancre, which flowed past Alberton,
the British side, and past Miramount,
on the German side, among ridges
and hills CLEANED through the nimbus
of shrapnel smoke.
Whenever one went forward the
scream of shells passed overhead, and
one might Judge the caliber by the
nature of the explosion. Those big
white balloon-like puffs over the first
line ground trenches were heavy mis-
siles from trench mortars, and those
huge black spurts, colored by the
earth, were eight or ten-inch howitzer
shell fire, fired into the second line
trenches and still bigger squirt, aimed
at the redoubt, was a fifteen-inch
shell. a. -,
"A mist, for distance Of a hundred
yards on the front at another point
of the first line trenches meant that
4 the barbed wire was being cut
Gangs were busy, as usual, repair
ing the network Of roads, old and new,
built for army purposes to carry the
heavy traffic OF caterpillar tractors,
steam and gasoline tractors and col
umns Of regulation motor, trucks
which were bringing up more shells.
at took time to prepare all of this,
and all of it had to be brought over
sea-" said an officer,
This morning from o'clock
to 7:30 all guns along the twen-
ty-mile front were firing their
fastest in chorus of final blasts, cut
ting wires and demolishing trenches.
The rapid fire of the small caliber
weapons resulted in continuous roll.
The trenches were hidden by cur
tain of smoke, punctured by vicious
flashes. Toward that cloud which
shrouded every form of destruction
within the power of man, the reserves
were moving forward. Far above the
observation balloons, motionless in
the still air, squadron aeroplanes
was flying to its work-spotting tar
gets for the artillery.
Add Their Shells.
At 7:20 o'clock the rapid-fire trench
mortars added their shells to the huge
pouring upon the first-line German
trenches.
| After ten minutes of this, at 7:30
the guns lifted their fire to the sec.
ond line of German trenches, as if
/ they were answering to the pressure
of a single button, and the men OF
the new British army leaped over
their parapets and rushed toward the
wreckage the guns and mortars had
wrought. Even close at hand they
were visible only moment before
being hidden by the smoke OF the
German shell curtain over what re-
mained of the trenches. The Ger.
mans had to yield to two years oi
our preparedness against forty for
the Germans" said the staff officer
"and we have satisfactorily started ir
on our first trial of our new divisions
in the team work of big attack"
Nothing was now to be seen from
the hill except smoke flashes through
which the famous figure of the virgin
atop the tower at Albert, struck by a
she'll early in the war, but still in
place, although tipped at an angle
showed dimly.
1t was not long, however, before fast
ambulanccs began coming down the
roads and patches of half starved
prisoners were being brought in, toe
dazed to appreciate their escape after
having been marooned five days in
their dugouts without food by the
British fire curtain; and into head.
quarters, from out of that inferno oi
confusion to the eve, came reports
making the whole movement intelli
gible.
The progress of the battle has beer
marked by steadily increasing in
tensity of the fighting throughout the
day. North OF the River Amcre il
has been particularly severe, The
enemy in several villages Offered
strenuous resistance, but the gallantr,
of the British troops resulted in their
gradually working around various
strong points.
At o'clock tonight the British
were around Gommecourt and Beau
, mont Hammel, and fighting at thi'
time was continuing dcterminedly, tht
first stage OF what promised to be ;
long action developing.
Among the troops opposite thu
British, il has been found, were tht
.. Prussian guard reserve division whicl
fought at Loos and Neuye Chapcllc,