Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-09-03
~ CAPTURE
WASTOUGHJO
nexican Troops Did 1t in
Singularly Complete Man
ner, However
|CRAwLED OVER CREST
Lade Dash Into Town and
Bombed Germans in Crot.
toes Under Streets
~ CAMERON MCKENZIE
ecisg Cable to Epening Public Ledger

SuOte W EpefttHs uotNC beust'
cosSvs0ht. 1918. bp ycto York Times Co.
M capture of Juvigny by American
trpope on Friday night was a difficult
and ~singularIy complete job. This
most solid operation was OF a kind
i With which the English, Scotch, the
ACanadians inc Australian troop have
long been familiar. The taking of
Juvigny meant fighting over a battle
ground of ~hopelessly war-torn terrain
and beating a way into the shell of
the collapsed town, where every atom
OF every ruin, as it were, spat machine
gun bullets.
The own lay a protected beneath
b roll of a gradually sloping hill,
the crest of which could at "a seconds
warning be enveloped in a perfect haze
Of hying iron. There was no profit in
exploiting courage that would have
AXE the Americans straight over the
top of the rising land and into the
town, and ii was by a kind of Fimy
ridge or Somme adaptation of Italian
lighting that the attack was made. OF
<scourse, there was ample artillery pre-
3aration. During this period, l was
ct far from the American guns. and
r perhaps an hour and a half the
. seemed continuous, the blast of
y one gun being completely swal.
wed In the solid roar and hurricane
AL.
Germans Were Ready
The Germans knew what was
poming, for the ridge that shelters
uyigny began to smoke black n
(horrihcally, as IL just over the hill
we're hundreds of factory Chimneys.
his commonplace of modern war Tor
lnued into dusk of the evening, and
EVEN Their only abated rather than
ased.
Meanwhile the American lads had
en- on the move; two c~ontingents of
en-, crawling, were working their
~ from shell-pit to shattered pill
e, painfully, over the crest and to-
the town. 1t was not a direct at
1t was an encircling movement
* (which hundreds of men for some
FRS reduced themselves to maneu-
Ing in the position of prairie dogs.
he two columns met. The meet
place was upon the o behind
e town. where boil lines managed
virtue of wide etour to arrive
fnparatively unobserved. That is,
syeral hundred machine guns were
5siduously spluttering at them, but
Ne German artillery proper had not
u searched them out.
The time had now come to make
dash for 1t, n h doughboys did.
& 18th their little cases of bombs they
Eept into Juvigny to mop it up. The
herman artillery let up. The German
Re descended.
Bombs Wrought Havoc
There were, prisoners said after
lard, about 1000 Germans in the town
9RFnRR the operation commenced. Many
Noeen silled before the attackers
ed. Those who were let resisted
fly with machine guns. n there
no. 4 little bayonet fighting in
streets. Many of the Germans
lkht refuge in certain natural caves
n lie beneath Juvigny. Bombs
h the Americans rained into the
/ darkness of those curious grot-
wrought the most gruesome
sc.
IL through the fresh late summer
ming the slaughter went on. The
hot of the matter was that aluns
II midnight the doughboys march
back $50 prisoners. Aside from
3. 1t Is not believed that a German
,ed alive from the town. Until
morning no word of d counter
TX upon Juvigny has been re.
enemy is established on the
further eastward, and, save for
Eery protests, has apparently al
possession of the place to pass
further dispute.