The Carlisle independent., 1917-06-14
ALLIES BIG VICTORY
Enemy's Lines in Belgium Pierced
 Along Ten-Mile Front.
STUNNING BLOW TO GERMANS
kaisers Troops Demoralized by Ex- plosion of Mines and Unprece- dented Artillery Fire-British
 Losses Reported Light.

attack Wnlcn began dt lhFee O CiOCh this morning the British have captured the ssines-Wytschaete ridge, which commands the whole of the German line in Belgium, and have smashed the German salient of which Wytschaete i is the apex.
 The Germans though apparently aware that the blow was coming and seemingly prepared to meet it, were driven from their nearly three years i hold on Messines ridge, opposite poor old" Ypres. Ypres in a sense was avenged today, for Messines ridge has i been the vantage point from which the i Germans have poured torrents of shells i Into the stricken city. The British also | wiped off an old score against the Ger i mans. for they held the ridge in Octo- | Der, 1914. and with very thin forces, l and virtually no artillery, fought blood 1 fly but vainly to hold it when the Prus- | sian troops massed their modern and 1 overpowering weapons of Wal against i 1t.
 i bombardment of Vimy ridge was child's play compared with the gunfire i turned upon Messines ridge. Record Work of Artillery. 1 This fire reached it's climax just as dawn was graying the eastern skies and while the full moon was still sus- pended high in the heavens. The attack was accompanied by all the arts and deviltries of latter-day war. The enemy guns and gun crews had been bsthed for days in gas shells sent over by the long-range British guns.
 The night was filled with red in- cendfary flames. Shells that spurted lead in streams crashed in appalling numbers about the heads of the de- lending soldiers. High-eXplosive and shrapnel fire was carried out with such rapidity that the earth writhed under the force of the attack.
 Mines that had taken two years to dig and fill with an overwhelming ex- plosive broke into an avalanche of flaming destruction in the half light of dawn. This was indeed an Ypres day of retaliation and victory for the vicious sufferings of two years and eight months.
 Gunners Work Half Naked. It was a day of intense heat and the gunners worked stripped to the waist. The attack went forward with clock like regularity.
 The British casualties were slight. Three out of four of the casualties were reported to be walking cases, who would return to duty in a few days.
 The attack began at dawn, and the setting was as picturesque as can well be imaginable. The day before had been hot and sultry. Toward evening there was a series of thunder storms which extended well into the night the | lightning mingling with the flashes of the guns, but the thunder being virtu- ] ally unnoticed amid the din of the can | non. A full moon struggled continu- l ously to break through the heavy clouds which scudded across the vel i vety night sky.
 Sing on Way to Fight. I On the way to the front were all the familiar pictures of the war-endless ] trains of motor trucks; all varieties | of horse transport, the British sol l diers marching to battle light of heart and singing songs familiar in every American community.
 From the German line the same lazy, looping rocket signals were as
 cending to illuminate the treacherous
 bit of ground between the trenches
 known as No Mans Land. This night
 ly "straffing" had been going on so
 long that the enemy considered it en-
 tirely normal and took no alarm. Oc-
 casionally blue and yellow rockets
 would be flung into the air by Germans
 holding the front line.
 Like Volcanoes in Eruption.
 Day was scarcely breaking when
 from the dimly visible ridge score
 of fiery volcanoes seemed suddenly to
 spring from the earth. The night had
 been filled with strange noises and still
 stranger sights. but these masses of
 flame, leaping from the ground, had a
 meaning all their own. They were the
 spectacular outward and visible evi-
 dences of more than a million pounds
 of high explosives which had been
 buried deep in mines below the ene-
 my's positions for months.
 All the world appeared lurid and
 horrible under the sinister glow. The
 earth shook as if torn by a great seis
 mic disturbance. It was not single
 shock. The force of the explosion
 actually set the earth rocking to and fro, and under the influence of the giant guns, which immediately began to roar from far and near, the trem bling continued indefinitely.