The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-09-12
Never have British troops shown

| Never have British troops shown
 ersa+er heroism or fought against overwhelming odds with greater cool
 ness and tenacity than in the battle
 of the dunes by Nieuport.
 | Broken and dazed after day-long
 bombardment of unprecedented 1ury'
 the survivors stuck gr1nly 10 the
 wreckaee of their defences-fightlng l hand to hand with the marines who Icame in the wake of a Wh1rlWlnd or shell, fighting when surrounded, even when overpowered, fighting, many oA them, until they died.
 l The loss of a few sandhills can be borne with equanimity, the loss Of
 noanv fine men with fortitude, for the
 memory of their day of trial will en-
 dure long after the Hun has been swept far inland from the sea. The story of the attack concerns | chiefly the two English battalions
 named-the Kings Royal Riflemen l holding the coastward end or the line the last men in the great barrier of Ithe Allies between the Alps and the sea-an6 the Northamptons, who were on their right. | Our troops were wholly unused to | fighting in the conditions that pre- | vailed. Trenches embedded in yield ing sand 1neV1LdDly SuCCuAlp SoSAiS " an intensive bombardment.
 The dunes extend inland along the part of the coast for nearly two-thirds I of a. rnile-three-quar of the dis tance between Newport and the coast | The grass-tufted hills are of varying
 height and the spaces between are l clogged with fine, loose sand, in which men sink above their ankles, so that. every movement is hampered
 and in the language of one of them, l s.It's like trying to fight with flatirons tied to your feet"
 The German. defences, which begin at the coast, just above the ruins of Nieuport Lighthouse, curved slightly towards Lombardtzyde, jutting out again as they encircled that village. They leave the dunes in the region l of Lombartzyde and enter the partial l ly inundated country. 4 ] All the ground hereabouts is ex- Iceedingly swampy and dotted with pools of water, making attack exceed- lingly difficult, but between Lom- l bardtzyde and the sea there was only l sand in front of the enemy defences l and our own, with the straight bed of 1.-the canal cutting. through it from six to seven hundred yards distant behind our lines.
 The Germans won these dunes with guns not men. Their success was due
 wholly to an all-day bombardment of great intensity, set in three-hour cy-
 cles, which completely effaced our de- ] fences between Nieuport and the sea. It seems impossible that any human I beings were able to survive. such an ordeal, much less fight, as did these
 splendid lads, at the close of day of torment.
 The enemy turned every available l howitzer on that narrow strip of dunes, less than a quarter of mile long and perhaps seven hundred yards deep, and no trenches and dug outs could withstand such a weight of
 metal. ~
 This deliberate ''preparation'' be- gan soon after six o'clock on Tuesday morning. The German guns opened
 on our front line and barraged it for exactly an hour, lifted to the support line for another hour. moved across the canal for another hour, and fpaus- ed for five minutes.
 Then they began again on the sup port line, shifted an hour later south ! of the canal, then dropped again for | the third hour on the front line. Il Again there was five minutes inter lval Then they began south of the
 canal, moving for the second hour of 4 this cycle to the support line and fin l ishing it on the front line.
 I It was now between two and three o'clock in the afternoon. For a quar- ter of an hour the German batteries lEested.. Then they put down a heavy I jbarrage-it was all done with 5.9 in.
 shell on all three lines, on both sides of the canal, and plastered them with |
 l It was obvious by midday that this lbombardmeht was more than a retail iation for our raid the night before I Trenches had been battered in and the bridges across the Yser north o1
 Nieuport destroyed.
 Men, driven from their wrecked dugouts, tried to shelter as best they could in the dunes, but there was no thought of trying to fal1s back across
 the canal and the Northamptons and
 and the Riflemen stuck grimly to their posts. S
 The commanding officer of the T Kings Royal Riflemen, whose bat. talion rested on the sea, sent back a messenger early in the afternoon re- Iporting, the destruction of his de. fences and the Yser bridges. He re- .l mained at the battalion headquarters iuntil it was hit by two shells, and then moved with the surviving officers into a tunnel near the beach. The North. amptons on his right had no such re- Il fuge. Their commanding officer and T his adjutant stuck to the ruins o1 their dugout among the> sandhills Like the others, they were wholly cut
 off. Telephone wires had been brok.
 en, and runners were lost in storm of shell.
 Many machine guns disappeared ir the shifting dunes. A few were twist led into scrap iron by. direct hits, an6
 those remaining intact were fouled b, grains of sand, so that they damned
 when the gunners tried to- turn then
 against the marines. I have heard O,
 only two machine guns that could be
 put, in action during the struggle . among the sandhills.
 Meanwhile high velocity gun.
 searched our back areas and our ap
 breaches to the canal, and enemy air.
 men tried to patrol the sky above the
 German lines. There was nothing fol
 our men but to sit tight as best the,
 could and wait for the assaHlt | It was delivered shortly after sever
 o'clock. The bombardment, whict
 has not slackened during the latter
 part of the afternoon. reached it's eli
 max at a quarter past six and fo,