From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 Part 29

It is fair to these men to say that they obeyed their orders and fought on Friday with most fierce courage. It was only here and there that small bodies of German troops, caught in our barrage and nerve-broken by the long agony of lying in water under a ceaseless sh.e.l.l-fire, ran forward to our men as soon as the first brown lines appeared out of the mud and surrendered. The men behind the machine-guns opened fire at the moment of attack, and it was the noise of this light artillery, the long-drawn swish of its bullets whipping the ground, and a devil's tattoo of groups of machine-guns hidden up the slopes, that broke upon our men as soon as they began to make their way through the mud.

I have already told how many of our men had spent the night. Large bodies of them had lain out since Wednesday. Of these some had been luckier than others, getting hot drink and food and shelter under tarpaulin tents which did not keep them dry, but kept off the full force of the beating rains. Others, not so lucky, had to lie in sh.e.l.l-holes half full, or quite full, of ice-cold water, and rations had gone astray, as many ration parties could not get up through the hostile barrage or were bogged somewhere down below; and for some men at least there was not the usual drop of rum to warm the "c.o.c.kles of their hearts" and to bring back a little glow of life to their poor numbed limbs. Other men had spent the night in marching, spurred on by the hateful fear of being too late to take their place in the battle-line, so that their comrades would not have their help, but spurred to no quickness because every yard of ground had its obstacle and its ditch, and it was a crawl all the way, with many slips and falls and shouts for help.

It was pitch-dark, and the rain beat against these men, driven by the savage wind, plucking at their capes, buffeting their steel helmets, straining at the straps of their packs, slas.h.i.+ng them across the face.

Their boots squelched deep in the mud and made a queer, sucking noise as these single files of dark figures went shuffling across along slimy duck-boards, a queer noise which I heard when I went up with some of them on the morning of the battle over duck-board tracks. Some of them lost the duck-boards and went knee-deep into bogs, and waist-deep into sh.e.l.l-holes, and neck-deep into swamps. In spite of all the frightfulness of the night, the coldness, the weariness, and the beastliness of this floundering in mud and sh.e.l.l-fire, they went forward into the battle with grim, set faces, and attacked the places from which the machine-gun fire came in blasts. The New-Zealanders attacked many blockhouses and strong points immediately in front of their first objective on the left above the Ypres-Roulers railway, and on the way to the marsh bottom and rising slope of the Goudberg spur, where at Bellevue the enemy's machine-guns were thickly cl.u.s.tered.

Below that, by Heine House and Augustus, the Australian troops were trying to work their way forward to the hummock of Crest Farm, barring the way to Pa.s.schendaele, and up on the left centre, from the cross-roads and cemetery of Poelcappelle, the Scottish and English battalions--Berks.h.i.+res, East Surreys, West Kents, and others--a.s.saulted the brewery, which has been captured twice and twice lost, and a row of buildings in heaps of ruin on the Poelcappelle road, which the Germans use as cover for their machine-gunners. Many of these outposts were captured by groups. Our men worked round then and rushed them, in spite of the streams of bullets which pattered around them so that many fell in the first attempts. Here and there the enemy fought fiercely to the last, and fell under the bayonets of our men. Here and there, in the open ground to the right of Poelcappelle and on the ground below Pa.s.schendaele, batches of German soldiers made little fight, but came rus.h.i.+ng out of their holes with their hands up, terror-stricken.

But machine-gun fire never ceased from the higher ground, from tall masts of branchless trees, from sh.e.l.l-craters beyond the reach of our men. Our barrage travelled ahead, and slow as it was I saw it creeping up the lower slopes of the Pa.s.schendaele ridge for the second objective on Friday morning--our men could not keep pace with it. They were stuck in the swamps at Marsh Bottom in the Lekkerbolerbeek below Poelcappelle and in the bogs below Crest Farm. They plunged into these bogs, fiercely cursing them, struggling to get through them to the enemy, but the men could do nothing with their legs held fast in such slime, nothing but shout to comrades to drag them out. While they struggled German snipers shot at them with a cool aim, and the machine-gun bullets of the deadly barrage lashed across the sh.e.l.l-craters.

Australian troops on the right made good and reached the edge of the hummock called Crest Farm. Some of them swarmed up it and fought and killed the garrison there, but beyond was another knoll with machine-gunners and riflemen, and as our men came up to the top of Crest Farm they were under close and deadly fire. They would have held their ground here if they could have been supported on the left, but the New-Zealanders were having a terrible time in Marsh Bottom and Bellevue, and could not make much headway because of the deadly fire which came down from the spur on which Bellevue is perched. All this time it was raining hard, making the ground worse than before, and the wet mists deepened, preventing all visibility for our machines working with the guns. Orders were given not to continue the second stage of the attack, because the weather was too bad, and the Australians on the right centre withdrew their line in order not to have an exposed flank. In the afternoon the enemy's heavy artillery, which had been very hesitating and uncertain during the first stages of the attack, began to barrage the ground intensely, and continued this fire all the night.

Meanwhile close and fierce fighting was all about Poelcappelle. English and Scottish troops entered the ruins of the village, in spite of the waves of machine-gun bullets which girdled it, drove the Germans out of the brewery buildings for a time, fought their way among the brick-heaps and ruined houses, killed many men who held out there, and with bayonet and rifle defended themselves against counter-attacks which came down the Poelcappelle road. It was as savage and desperate fighting as any episode in this war at close quarters, without mercy on either side, one man's life for another's. Our men were reckless and fierce. They fought in small parties, with or without officers. Ground was gained and lost by yards, and men fought like wild beasts across the broken walls and ditches and sh.e.l.l-craters which go by the name of Poelcappelle. It was five o'clock in the evening that another strong counter-attack by the enemy came down Poelcappelle road and drove in our advanced posts. The brewery then became a sort of No Man's Land--an empty sh.e.l.l between opposing sides. Our men were spent after all that night and day in the mud and all this fighting, and now dusk was creeping down, and it was hard to see who was friend and who was enemy among the figures that crawled about in the slime.

It was the turn for stretcher-bearers, those men who work behind the fighting-lines and then come to gather up the human wreckage off it.

With great heroism they had worked all day under heavy fire, and now went on working without thought of self. They were visible to the enemy, and their Red Cross armlets showed their mission. Away on the slopes of Pa.s.schendaele his stretcher-bearers could be seen working too. One body of 200 men came out, waving the Red Cross flag, with stretchers and ambulances, and went gleaning in these harvest-fields, and no shot of ours went over to them. But on our side shots from German snipers were still flying and our stretcher-bearers were hit. Three of them carrying one stretcher were killed, and the officer with them directing this work near Poelcappelle was fired with a flame of anger. He seized a Red Cross flag and made his way very quickly over the sh.e.l.l-holes towards the enemy's position, and standing there, this officer of the R.A.M.C.

shouted out a speech which rang high above the noise of gun-fire and all the murmur of the battlefield.

Perhaps what he said was quite incoherent and wild. Perhaps no man who heard him could understand a word of what he said, but there in the sh.e.l.l-holes hidden from him in the mud were listening men with loaded rifles, and they may have raised their heads to look at that single figure with the flag. They understood what he meant. His accusing figure was a message to them. After that there was no deliberate sniping of stretcher-bearers, though they still had to go through sh.e.l.l-fire. It was hard on the wounded that night. The lightly wounded made their way back as best they could, and it was a long way back, and a dark way back over that awful ground. G.o.d knows how they managed it, these men with holes in their legs and mangled arms and b.l.o.o.d.y heads. They do not know.

"I thought I should never get back," said many of them yesterday. "It was bad enough going up, when we were strong and fit. At the end of the journey we could hardly drag our limbs along to get near the enemy. But coming down was worse."

They fell not once but many times, they crawled through the slime and then fell into deep pits of water with slippery sides, so that they could hardly get out. They lay down in the mud and believed they must die, but some spark of vitality kept alive in them, and a great desire for life goaded them to make another effort to go another hundred yards.

They cried out incoherently, and heard other cries around them, but were alone in some mud-track of these battlefields with a great loneliness of the soul. One man told me of his night like that, told me with strange smiling eyes that lightened up the mud mask of his face under a steel hat that was like an earthenware pot on his head. All the time he opened and shut his hands very slowly and carefully, and looked at them as things separate from himself. They had become quite dead and white in the night, and were now getting back to life and touch from the warmth of a brazier over which he crouched.

"I crawled a thousand yards or so," he said, "and thought I was finished. I had no more strength than a baby, and my head was all queer and dizzy-like, so that I had uncommon strange thoughts and saw things that weren't there. The sh.e.l.ls kept coming near me, and the noise of them shook inside my head so that it went funny. For a long time while I lay there I thought I had my chums all round me, and that made me feel a kind of comfortable. I thought I could see them lying in the mud all round with just their shoulders showing humped up and the tops of their packs covered in mud. I spoke to them sometimes and said, 'Is that you, Alf?' or 'Come a bit nearer, mate.' It didn't worry me at first because they didn't answer. I thought they were tired. But presently something told me I was all wrong. Those were mud-heaps, not men. Then I felt frightened because I was alone. It was a great, queer kind of fear that got hold of me, and I sat up and then began to crawl again just to get into touch with company, and I went on till daylight came and I saw other men crawling out of sh.e.l.l-holes and some of them walking and holding on to each other. So we got back together."

They came back to the field dressing-stations, where there was warmth for them and hot drinks, and clean bandages for their wounds; and groups of men, who had fought with the same courage, and now, in spite of all they had endured, spoke brave words, and said it was not the enemy that had checked them but only the mud. Their spirit had not been beaten, for no hards.h.i.+ps in the world will ever break that.

But while I was talking with these men a figure came and sat on a bench among them speechless, because no one understood his tongue. It was a wounded German prisoner, and I saw from his shoulder-strap that he belonged to the 233rd Regiment of the 119th Division. Among all these men of ours who spoke with a fine hopefulness of what they would do next time he was hopeless. "We are lost," he said. "My division is ended. My friends are all killed." When asked what his officers thought, he made a queer gesture of derision, with one finger under his nose when he says "Zut." "They think we are 'kaput' too; they only look to the end of the war."

"And when do they think that will come?" He said, "G.o.d willing, before the year ends."

In civilian life he was a worker in an ammunition factory at Thuringen, by the Black Forest. He had seen many English there, and never thought he should fight against them one day. His father, who is forty-seven, is in the war. He himself looked a man of that age--old and worn, with a week's beard on his chin; but when I asked him his age he replied, "I am twenty-one. Last night I was twenty-one, when I lay after three days in a sh.e.l.l-hole--['ein granatenloch']--and your men helped me out because I was wounded."

"What do you think of our men?" he was asked, and he said, "They are good. Your artillery is good. It is very bad for us. We are 'kaput.'"

On one side of the fire were the men who think they are winning, whatever checks they may have, and who always attack with that faith in their hearts. On the other side was the man who said "We are finished,"

and sat huddled up in despair. All of them had suffered the same things.

To-day the sky is clear again, and the pale gold of autumn sunlight lies over the fields, and all the woods behind the lines are clothed in russet foliage. It is two days late, this quiet of the sky, and if Friday had been like this there would have been a flag of ours on the northern heights of Pa.s.schendaele Ridge. But still the gunners go on with their toil, those wonderful gunners of ours, who get very little sleep and very little rest and go down for an hour or two into a hole in the earth in those sodden fields where all day long and all night there is the tumult of bombardment. Piles of sh.e.l.ls lie on the ground, heaps around them, and behind men are labouring to bring up more; and across the battlefields, strangely close to the actual fighting-line, black trains go steaming along rails which hundreds of men have risked their lives to lay a hundred yards, so that the guns shall be fed and the gunners have no respite. On the left of the line there is blue among the brown of our armies, and on the morning of the battle I saw French limbers and transport wagons using the same tracks as our own, and heard the rattle of the "soixante-quinze" again below Houthulst Forest, where there are still leaves on the trees and the beauty of a dense yellowing foliage is there beyond all those other woods where there are only fangs and stumps of trees in the fields where our men have fought.

OCTOBER 23

The fighting yesterday east of Poelcappelle and on the right of the French by Houthulst Forest across the Ypres-Staden railway showed a curious inequality in the strength and determination of the German defence. The French themselves had easy going, swinging up from Jean Bart House across some trench works and through a cl.u.s.ter of blockhouses. The German artillery-fire was slight against them, so that their losses are very few--though they were held a while in the centre by machine-gun fire--and it seems likely that the French gas-sh.e.l.ls, fired over the enemy's batteries before the attack, had had a paralysing effect on some of the German gunners. Whatever the cause, there was a strange absence of high explosives, and the line was not thickly held by the men of the 40th Division, who have lately come from Russia. One officer and a score of men were captured, and a number of dead lie about the blockhouses, killed by the French bombardment. The others fled into the forest. Behind them they left two field-guns.

East of Poelcappelle and on the right of our attack the German infantry were also weak in their resistance, and our men of the Norfolk and Ess.e.x Regiments who advanced hereabouts did not have much trouble with them at close quarters. What trouble there was came from a machine-gun barrage farther back, which whipped over the sh.e.l.l-craters and whistled about the ears of our a.s.saulting troops. The heavy gunning that we have put over this ground for more than a week, with special concentration on strong points like the ruined brewery outside the sc.r.a.p-heap village of Poelcappelle and the other blockhouses, had made this area a most unhealthy neighbourhood for German garrisons, and they had withdrawn some of their strength to safer lines, leaving small outposts, with orders to hold out at all costs--orders easy to give and hard to obey in the case of men dejected and shaken by a long course of concussion and fear.

A Bavarian division, the Fifth Bavarian Reserve, had been living in those pill-boxes and sh.e.l.l-holes until two nights ago, and whatever the German equivalent may be of "fed up" they were that to the very neck.

Some of our Suffolk and Berks.h.i.+re boys had taken prisoners among these Bavarians on days and nights before the attack, and these men made no disguise of their disgust at their conditions of life. Like other Bavarians taken elsewhere, they complained that they were being made catspaws of the Prussians, and put into the hottest parts of the line to save Prussian skins. Some of the Bavarian battalions have had an epidemic of desertion to the back areas, in the spirit of "I want to go home." A fortnight ago there was a case of thirteen men who set off for home. A few of them actually reached Nuremberg, and others were arrested at Ghent.

One strange and gruesome sign of trouble behind the German firing-line was found by one of our Cameronians the other day after an advance. It was a German officer bound and shot. Opposite Poelcappelle the German Command thought it well to pull out the 5th Bavarian Reserve and replace them two nights ago by Marines of the 3rd Naval Division, who are stout fellows, whatever their political opinions may be after the recent mutiny at Wilhelmshaven, from which some of them have come. On our left centre yesterday they fought hard and well, with quick counter-attacks, but opposite Poelcappelle they did not resist in the same way and did not come back yesterday to regain the ground taken by our men of the Eastern Counties.

The Norfolk and Ess.e.x battalions had to make their way over bad ground.

In spite of a spell of dry weather one night of rain had been enough to turn it all to sludge again and to fill and overflow the sh.e.l.l-holes, which had never dried up. The Lekkerbolerbeek has become a marsh waist-deep for men, not so much by rain-storms as by sh.e.l.l-storms which have torn up its banks and slopped its water over the plain. Before the attack yesterday morning our air photographs taken in very low flights showed the sort of ground our men would have to cross. Everywhere the sh.e.l.l-craters show up s.h.i.+nily in the aerial photographs, with their water reflecting the light like silver mirrors. Higher up there are floods about Houthulst Forest extending to the place where the enemy keeps his guns behind the protection of the water, and no lack of rain-filled sh.e.l.l-holes on each side of the Ypres-Staden railway.

Bad going; but our battalions went well, keeping close to their whirlwind barrage of fire and keeping out of the water-pits as best they could, and scrambling up again when they fell over the slimy ground.

Manchesters and Lancas.h.i.+re Fusiliers, Ches.h.i.+res, Gloucesters, and Royal Scots; Northumberland Fusiliers, Suffolks and Norfolks, Ess.e.x and Berks.h.i.+res--how good it is to give those good old names--went forward yesterday morning in the thick white mist, and took all the ground they had been asked to take whether it was hard or easy. It was hardest to take, and hardest to hold, on the right of Houthulst Forest and on the left of the Ypres-Staden railway. Here the enemy held his line in strength, and protected it with a fierce machine-gun barrage and enfilade fire from many batteries which were quick to get into action.

Houthulst Forest, in spite of all the gas that has soaked it, was full of German troops of the 26th Reserve Division, under stern orders to defend it to the death, with another division in support, and the Marines on their right. They had many concrete emplacements in the cover of the forest, from which they were able to get their machine-guns into play, and along the Staden railway there were blockhouses not yet destroyed by our bombardment, which were strongholds from which they were not easily routed. There was hard fighting by the Royal Scots for some huts along the railway, and after holding them they had to withdraw in the face of a heavy counter-attack, which the enemy at once sent down the line. Elsewhere the Manchesters had a similar experience, coming under heavy cross-fire and then meeting the thrust of German storm troops. They and the Lancas.h.i.+re Fusiliers behaved with their usual fine courage, and were slow to give ground at one or two points, where they were forced to draw back two hundred yards or so. The Ches.h.i.+res and the Gloucesters were severely tried, but the Gloucesters especially held out yesterday in an advanced position, with the most resolute spirit against fierce attacks and great odds, and still hold their ground. At daybreak to-day, after all the exhaustion of yesterday and a cold wet night and heavy fire over them, they met another attack, shattered it, and took twenty prisoners. That is a feat of courage which only men out here who have gone through such a day and night--and there are many thousands of them--can properly understand and admire. It is the courage of men tried to the last limit of human will-power and sustained by some burning fire of the spirit in their coldness and their weariness. The Northumberland Fusiliers, at another part of the line, and the Ches.h.i.+res and Lancas.h.i.+re Fusiliers dug in round an old blockhouse, using their rifles to break up the bodies of Germans who tried to force through. At night, or rather at eight o'clock last evening, when it was quite dark, the enemy regained a post, but could do no more than that, and it was a small gain. On the whole the progress made yesterday was good, and considering the state of the ground, still our greatest trouble, was a splendid feat of arms by those men of the old county regiments who are given the honour they deserve by public mention.

The enemy losses were heavy. All last week they were heavy, owing to the ceaseless fire of our guns, and the dead that lie about the ground of this new advance, to a thousand yards in depth, show that his men have suffered.

XXIII

THE CANADIANS COME NORTH

OCTOBER 26

Once again our troops, English and Canadians, have attacked in rain and mud and mist. It is the worst of all combinations for attack, and during the last three months, even on the dreadful days in August never to be forgotten by Irish battalions and Scots, they have known that combination of hostile forces not once but many times, when victory more complete than the fortune of war has given us yet, though we have had victories of real greatness, hung upon the moisture in the clouds and the difference between a few hours of suns.h.i.+ne and the next storm.

To-day our men of the 5th Division have again attacked Polderhoek Chteau, the scene of many fights before, and taken many prisoners from that 400 men of four German companies who were its garrison, holding the high ruins which looked down into swamps through which our men had to wade. They have fought their way to the vicinity of Gheluvelt. This ground is sacred to the memory of the British soldiers who fought and died there three years ago. One of our airmen, flying low through the mist and rain-squalls, is reported to have seen Germans running out of Gheluvelt Chteau, a huddle of broken walls now after this three years'

war, and escaping down the Menin road. Nothing is very definite as I write from that part of the line, as nothing can be seen through the darkness of the storm and few messages come back out of the mud and mist.

Northwards the Canadians have taken many "pill-boxes" and an uncounted number of prisoners--not easily, not without tragic difficulties to overcome in the valleys of those miserable beeks, which have been spilt into swamps, and up the slopes of the Pa.s.schendaele spur, such as Bellevue, with its concrete houses which guard the way to the crest.

North still, beyond Poelcappelle, where the Broenbeek and the Watervlietbeek intermingle their filthy waters below two spurs, which are thrust out from the main ridge like the horns of a bull, south of Houthulst Forest, battalions of the London Regiment with Artists Rifles and Bedfords have attacked the enemy in his stone forts through his machine-gun barrages and have sent back some of their garrisons and struggled forward up the slopes of mud in desperate endeavour. And on the left of us this morning the French made an advance where all advance seemed fantastic except for amphibious animals, through swamps thigh-deep for tall men. This was west of a place falsely named Draeibank, and surrounded by deeper floods, which would have made the most stalwart "Poilus" sink up to their necks, and, with their packs on, drown. It was no good going into that, though on the right edge of the deep waters some French companies waded through and took a blockhouse, with a batch of prisoners and machine-guns.

West of Draeibank there were several blockhouses, but their concrete had been smashed under the French bombardments, and those Germans who had not been killed fled behind the shelter of the waters. Their barrage of gun-fire fell heavily soon after the attack began by the French, but for the most part into the floods which our "Poilu" friends did not try to cross, so that they jeered at these water-spouts ahead of them.

Our troops had a longer way to go and a worse way, and it has been a day of hard fighting in most miserable conditions. Their glory is that they have done these things I have named on such a day. The marvel is to me that they were able to make any kind of attack over such ground as this.

In those vast miles of slime there has been from six o'clock this morning enough human heroism, suffering, and sacrifice to fill an epic poem and the eyes of the world with tears. It is wonderful what these men of ours will do. But in telling their tale they smile a little grimly in remembrance, or say just simply: "It was h.e.l.l!"

There is more in a battle than fighting. What goes before it to make ready for the hour of attack is as vital, and demands as much, perhaps a little more, courage of soul. Before this battle there was much to be done, and it was hard to do. Guns had to be moved, not far, but moved, and out of one bog into another bog--those monsters of enormous weight, which settle deeply into the slime. To be in time for this morning's barrage, gunners, already worn, craving sleep and silence, dog-weary of mud and noise after weeks and months of great battles, had to work like Trojans divinely inspired to win another day's victory, and they spurred themselves harder than their horses in this endeavour. They were often under sh.e.l.l-fire. Not only the gunners, but all the transport men, all the pioneers and working parties have done their utmost. Battalions of fighting men, busy not with their rifles but with shovels and duck-boards, worked in the mud--mud baulking all labour, swallowing up logs, boards, gun-wheels, sh.e.l.ls, spades, and the legs of men, the slime and filthy water slopping over all the material of war urgently wanted for this morning's "show." The enemy tried to hara.s.s the winding teams of pack-mules staggering forward under a burden of ammunition boxes, rations, every old thing that men want if they must fight. Those mule leaders and transport men do not take a lower place than the infantry who went away to-day. They took as many risks, and squared their jaws to the ordeal of it all like those other men. The fighting troops went marching up or driving up in the rain. Far behind the Front the roads were filled with dense surging traffic, which we out here will always see and hear in our dreams after peace has come, the great never-ending tide of human life going forward or coming back, as one body of men relieve those who have gone before. Rain washed their faces, so that they were red with the smart of it. It slashed down their mackintosh capes and beat a tattoo on their steel helmets. On the tops of London buses, the old black buses which once went pouring up Piccadilly before they came out to these dirty roads of war, all the steel helmets were tilted sideways as the wind struck aslant the muddy brown men with upturned collars on their way up to the fighting-lines.

But last night was fine. The sky cleared and the stars were very s.h.i.+ning. Orion's Belt was studded with bright gems. It was like a night of frost, when the stars have a sharper gleam. Away above the trees there was a flash of gun-fire, red spreading lights, and sudden quick stabs of fire. The guns were getting busy again. "A great night for bombing," said an officer; "and good luck for to-morrow." Our night patrols were already out. In the garden where that officer spoke there was a white milky radiance, so that all the trees seemed insubstantial as in a fairy grove where t.i.tania might lie sleeping. Far off beyond the trees was a white house, and the moonlight lay upon it, and gave it a magic look. Perhaps the work being done inside was the black magic of war, and men may have been bending over maps strangely marked, and full of mystery, unless one knows the code which deals with the winning of battles. "For once we may have luck with the weather," said another officer. About midnight there was a change. Great clouds gathered across the moon. It began to rain gustily, and then settled down to a steady, slogging downpour.

Our luck with the weather went out with the stars, and this morning when our men went away the ground was more hideous than it has ever been this year, and that would seem a wild exaggeration to men who tried to get through Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood on the wet days of August.

They went into swamps everywhere, into the zone of sh.e.l.l-craters newly brimmed with water, and along tracks without duck-boards, where men went ankle-deep, if not knee-deep or waist-deep.

The enemy was expecting them. There seems no doubt of that. An hour or so before the attack he began to barrage the ground in some parts, and in their blockhouses the German machine-gunners got ready to sweep the advancing battalions. Our own barrage thundered out shortly before six from all the guns which had got to their places after the great struggle in the mud. On the right the ground about Polderhoek Chteau was flooded down in the hollow below that ruin, which is perched up on a rise. Our men of the 5th Division--Devons, Scottish Borderers, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry--were not far away from it, a few hundred yards, but it was a difficult place to attack. The enemy had built concrete defences inside and blockhouses on either side of it and in the wood behind. But our men went very gallantly through the mora.s.s, in spite of the machine-gun fire that swept over them, and worked on either side of the chteau, closing round the blockhouse, while from the centre they made a direct attack on the chteau ruins. In spite of the foul weather, with a high wind blowing and a thick, wet mist, our airmen went out all along the line and flew very low, peering down at our men. One of them reported quite early that our boys were all round Polderhoek Chteau, hauling out the Huns, while bombing fights were in progress on either side of it. Later messages confirmed this. Sixty prisoners were seen coming back down the Menin road. A wounded German officer said the garrison of the chteau was 400 men, of four companies. It seems that they must all have been taken or killed, for later it was established that all the blockhouses and the chteau had been cleared, and our men were fighting beyond Polderhoek Wood.

Farther south there was fighting round about Gheluvelt, by Devons and Staffords of the 7th Division, and an observer reported that he had seen Germans running out of that chteau down the high road east of it, but it seems that there were a number of dug-outs in Gheluvelt Wood where the garrisons held out after our advance attack had pa.s.sed, and this was a great menace to our men, so that they may have had to withdraw in order to avoid that trap, or to keep in touch with the troops on their right, who were held up at a couple of redoubts in the morning.