The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-08-11
Ience was regular uncanny.

1G1SneQ Slu1nDer, dIO lAoie was HoL d sound within our lines. The nervous he always does when puzzled by night Hun sought refuge in fireworks, as mysteries.
 He painted the dim moonlight green and red and & dirty yellow with his rockets of inquiry, and the Very lights made No Mans Land as dazzling as Piccadilly on peace night.
 His vague fears were realized to the full at ten minutes past three. The ground reopened below the brim of Wytscheate as though the furnace doors of Hades itself had been thrown back, and an enormous fountain of fire spurted into the sky.
 It was infinitely terrifying. Another fountain gushed on the right, still an- other on the left. The black shadows of the slope turned to flame as the mines went up and with them the stout trenches-the scared face of Hill 60, a score of redoubts, and long banks of wire vanished in the night, and when dawn came there remained only dreadful gaps, Assures in the naked earth where our men found imbedded the remains of many of their enemies.
 The earth rocked as though a giant had had roughly shaken it. Then the guns began anew. It was a. wonder fully scientific barage that dropped in front of the advancing English bat talions. the Irishrnan, who had sunk their difference to meet the common foe, and the New Zealanders and Aus tralians, who kept their end of the advancing line. It curtained the ground we were sweeping over and it countered the waiting German bat teries beyond the ridge.
 Machine gunners sought to delay our men as much as possible. We had particularly hard fighting in the ruins known as the White Chateau and in Battle Wood-many of the names are of British designation where the Huns still have a. lodgment, but without hope of making it a prof. itable souvenir from the wreckage of the ridge.
 Our men got into the trench known as the Damstrasse and speedily clear ed it. They pushed through Ravine Wood, and found it simply choked with concrete dug-outs, or rather their remains, and the corpses of many Germans. They overran such indis- tinguishab1e patches of cratered earth as Bethlehem Farm, south of Messines two guns were found here-and Lumbs Farm, and Varmandmolen and Au Bon F'ermier Cabaret.
 In many places prisoners began to come out of the ground. Some of them tried to surrender to tanks-I have no details of the performances of the tanks, but I hear that they 0f t1,n,, particularly so-and little parties started running towards our men with hands up. A few of them were wounded, others deaf, stunned by
 mine explosions, and all extremely do- cile and glad to be shepherded back to the collecting cage and safety. Within an hour the first groups of dazed prisoners were tricklng back along the roads, some of them still so bewildered by the terrific shock of the mine explosions that they could scarcely think of talk coherently. They were a curiously mixed as- l semblage in the collecting cage. Youthful Prussian grenadiers lay on the grass in one corner, nerve-shaken and apprehensive one slight boy of the 1918 class on the verge of tears,
 
 ure twenty or thirty Bavarians of fine physique coo1ly watched the aero plane fighting in the light of the ris- traffic flowing past their barricade to- wards the battle front, quite unshaken | by the ordeal which had broken the spirit of their comrades. The Bavarians were less than six 1 hours in the line before they were captured, and that fact undoubtedly explains their higher morals. The 3rd Division, of which their 23d Regiment was part, had rested and refitted flor a month after being badly punished | in the battle of Arras. x The men had light duties and p1en- | ty of recreation in the Belgian will Iages, and they came up yesterday to | the Wytschaete-Messin sector new
 ly uniformed and fattened for the Bri-
 tish attack which was expected in the
 near future.
 They had suffered from our block!
 ading barrage on the journey Some l of the companies had casualties be- fore they reached the trenches, al
 though they were not so heavy as pthose of the Prussians adjoining. They
 ..took over'' during what they regard ed as an intense bombardment al l though the tired men they relieved l told them it was not equal to average
 daily smelling of the past week.
 Hardly had they settled into the un-
 familiar defences when the mines went
 up, and the first group of British in
 fantry found them helpless in the front line a few minutes later. The Bavarians said that when they were captured and sent back our men were l going ahead well, and they did not
 appear to have had any casualties, 1 Even more emphatic on this point were the two North German grena- | diers of the 1918 class-almost pa.
 thetical1y boyish recruits, who looked
 as though they ought to have been al
 home with their mothers.
 l They had been in the line for some
 days with the 4th Grenadier Regi.
 ment, which is part of the Second Prussian Division, and had suffered
 exceedingly from our artillery. Food 1 could not be brought up, sleep was impossible, and in the support line 200
 yards behind the front trenches where
 they were captured Jour shells had dropped profusely and accurately al
 day and all night.
 All that, however, was as nothing