Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1918-11-17
ECHOES OF GREAT
 ATTACK AT OSYEND
By Land, By Air and By Sea Allied Guns Played
 Havoc With Huns.

pondence The Associated Press. .)- Rem ralned from the skies upon the German areas back of Ostend and Zeebrusee 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 rein forcement line centers by ayiators of i the Royal Air Forces. Every squad ron and battery that returned to the brltlsh lines reported great fires 1 burning where ammunition dumps and stores of gasoline had been hit. They told of trains brought to a standstill by craters torn in their lines by air. plane bombs.
 While British monitors lying off the Belgian coast raked the German bat teries at Ostend and Zeebrugge with fifteen inch shells, the air attacks 1 concentrated on the reinforcement lines behind the German front. The triangle of railroad with Thourout, 1 Lichtervelde and Cortemarck at it's corners was the center of the British airplane activities. These three i'm. 1 portant railroad functions, but 5,0000 yards apart, were targets for the Fifth ! Group of British Air Forces.
 Dawn breaks late at this season and it was still dark, with dash of rain, when the hour for starting arrived From the various aerodrome S the for nations lifted into the drenched air and were quickly lost in the low hang ing clouds. To the south of them, be- yond DiXmude, the battle already was in progress. Seven machines 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 sev- en o'clock in the gray, rainy morning. The pilot who dived upon aZrren let go his bombs with height of only two hundred feet where he could see them land and burst in the troop 1 congested town. Another pilot hap pened upon a large-calibre battery emplaced to the north of Staden. He dived through the clouds to a height of two hundred feet before he let go his bombs and then waited until he was sure the battery had ceased to fire.
 l Squadron after squadron of air planes all flying low roared over the three functions at the angles of the railway triangle bombing them in- dustriously Every road had it's watch full sweeping airplane There was no safe channel for the hurrying cur rents 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.
 1 Near Werchem, the road was occu- pied for mile by a transport column 1 Eighteen well directed bombs con- rible barricade of smashed wagons and lorries, dead horses, dead and wounded men. The survivors scattered to wide ditches on either side of the road With two machine-guns firing together eighteen hundred round a minute the airplane piloat raked both ditches. Many casualties among per sonnel' 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 jthe airplanes had laid a line of dan ger across the country which the Germans had to travcel 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 trans can lie side by side was brightly Ill and feverish with activity. Trains were shunting and pulling in and ou' noisily for the German front was yielding before the Allied thrust anc risks had to be taken. Down came the bombs and the pilots saw the flasf of their explosions in the train-jam' and the sidings and forthwith the lights flickered out and darkness ant
 darkness and terror added themselves
 to the confusion and urgency below