Captain Boelke, Germany’s greatest airman, was killed October 28 in a collision with another airplane during a battle on the western front.  He was 25 years of age, had been wounded several times during the war, and is credited with having brought down forty Allied airplanes.

The October losses of the British in the Somme campaign were announced by the War Office to be 107,033, bringing the British total from the beginning of the campaign to 414,202 men and officers, killed, wounded and missing.

In the first days of November the principal activity was in the vicinity of Sailly.  The Germans effected a successful counter-attack on November 6, recapturing some of the ground won by the Allies, with 400 prisoners, 300 of them French.  Next day, however, a greater number of German prisoners was taken by the French in an advance along a two-and-a-half-mile front south of the Somme, and on the 9th the French strengthened their positions near Sailly, clearing out German trenches and taking more prisoners.

On November 13 the British took a five-mile front in the German line near the River Ancre, capturing two towns and 3,000 prisoners, the Germans being taken by surprise in the early morning mist.  Continuing their advantage the following day, the British took Beaucourt-sur-Anere with more than 5,000 prisoners.  On the 15th German troops took the offensive on both sides of the Somme and succeeded in forcing their way back into some of the trenches and advance positions held by the French, but the British continued their advance north of the Ancre.  Next day the French recovered the lost ground and their airmen engaged in fifty-four air battles with German machines along the Somme front.  On the 18th British and French airplanes again bombarded Ostend, dropping 180 bombs, and once more raided Zeebrugge.  In an ensuing battle six German planes were brought down.

Infantry fighting in the Dixmude sector between Belgian and German troops occurred on four consecutive days, from November 17 to 20, with hand-grenade battles but no definite result.  There was a general lull in operations after this, caused by heavy weather and fogs.

FRENCH ARE FINAL VICTORS AT VERDUN.

In a dramatic blow at Verdun, after a period of comparative quiet at that point, the French on October 24 took the village and fort of Douaumont, also Thiaumont, the Haudromont quarries, La Caillette Wood, Damloup battery and trenches along a four-mile front to a depth of two miles.  The ground retaken was the same that the Germans under the Crown Prince took by two months’ hard fighting.  This was the quickest and most effective blow struck in the Verdun campaign and reflected the highest credit on the French general commanding, General Petain, and his devoted troops, who thus turned the tide of victory at Verdun in favor of the French and stamped with failure the efforts of the Crown Prince, continued for nine months, to wrest Verdun from French control and open a road to Paris.  It was a campaign in which failure meant defeat for the Germans, and its cost in men, money and munitions was enormous.