Weekly journal-miner., 1918-11-27
RUIN RA|NSFROM| SKIES ON HUN
 NAVAL bASES.
SEVENTEEN TONS BOMBS DROPPED ON. OSTEND AND ZEEBURG BY AVIA- TORS OF THE ROYAL AIR FORCES.
Associated Press Correspondence.

{ DUNKlRk, France, Oct. 7.-Ruin rained from the skies upon the Ger man areas back of Ostend and Zee bruggee at the beginning of the great Allied offensive on the Belgian coast. Today the whole country in the rear of the German lines shows the scars of more than seventeen tons of bombs dropped upon the German re- inforcement line centers by aviators of the Royal Air Forces. Every squadron and battery that returned to the British lines reported great fires burning where ammunition dumps and stores of gasoline had been hit. They told of trains brought to a standstill by great craters torn 1 in their lines by airplane bombs. |! While British monitors lying off the Belgian coast rakcd the German batteries at Ostend and Zeebrugge with fifteen inch shells. the air att tacks concentrated on the reinforce ment lines behind the German front. The triangle of railroad with Thour out, Lichtervelde and Cortemarck at | its corners was the center of the Brit | ish airplane activities. These three important railroad functions, but 5000 yards apart, were targets for the Fifth Group of British Air For ces.
 | Dawn breaks late at this season and it was still dark, with dash of rain, when the hour for starting ar 4 rived. From the various aerodromes the formations lifted into the drench- ed air and were quickly lost in the low hanging clouds. To the south of them. beyond Dixmude, the battle already was in progress. Seven ma chimes were lost in the furry of night and bombs but the rest hurried on and arrived over their targets.
 The first bombs were falling by seven o'clock in the gray, rainy morn ing. The pilot who dived upon Ear ren let go his bombs from a height of only two hundred feet where he could see them land and burst in the troop-congested town. Another pilot happened upon large-calibre bat tery emplaccd to the north of Stad- en. He dived through the clouds to a. height of two hundred feet before Inc let go his bombs and then wait ] cd aloft until he was sure the bat sery had ceased to fire.
 Squadron after squadron Of air planes all flying low roared over the three junctions at the angles of the srailway triangle" bombing them in dustriously, Every road had its @atcliful sweeping airplane. There was no safe channel for the hurryinS elHrents of German traffic. A train going south from Thourout was raid ed by an airplane pilot who came down to within one hundred feet of | the ground and flew past the train, his machine-gun sweeping the troops who spouted. forth from it. Three trains were set on fire and direct hits were made on four others.
 Near Werehem, the road was oc- cupied for q mile by the transport column. Eighteen we'll directed bombs converted the moving column 1 into horrible barricade of smash ed wagons and lorries, dead horses. dead and wounded men. The surviv- ors scattered to wide ditches on either side of the road With two ma chine-guns firing together eighteen hundred rounds a minute the airplane pilot raked down both ditches. Many casualties among personnel" was the official statement of the result.
 As daylight broadened and the weather improved every railway and every road behind the German lines was a river of vehicles and men, but the airplanes had laid a line of dan ger across the country which the Germans had to travel from their bases to the front where the British and Belgians were driving the Hun line backward.
 That night the great railway siding near Ghent where twenty-five trains can lie side by side was brightly lit and feverish with activity. Trains were shunting and pulling in and out noisily for the German front was yielding before the Allied thrust and risks had to be taken. Down came the bombs and the pilots saw the flash of their explosions in the train jams and the sidings and forthwith | the lights flickered out and darkness and terror added themselves to the confusion and urgency below.
 Thereafter the Germans, when they moved large bodies of troops, nov ed them under cover of night, and . possibly across the fields. The air barrage across the ways to the front was an invisible one, that wavered h and shifted and was deadly; it was as though there rose from the marshy