In 1917 we were preparing for the long-drawn attack which eventually gave us the Passchendaele Ridge ([Plate 17]), fighting for months over such ground as the foreground of the photograph shows. Defence by such means as the construction of a "Hindenburg Line" was quite impossible in the mud and slime of the salient, and Von Armin devised the scheme of what we came to call "pillboxes." Each pillbox was a structure ([Plate 18]) of reinforced concrete, often large enough to hold thirty or forty men with machine-guns, and strong enough to give protection from everything short of a direct hit by a large shell. They were only raised above ground-level sufficiently to allow the guns to be worked, their entrances being, of course, at the back. They were echeloned along behind the front line, and connected and protected by barbed-wire entanglements. They proved a serious difficulty when we first had to deal with them in July-August, 1917. General Haig says:
"Many were reduced as our troops advanced, but others held out during the day, and delayed the arrival of our supports."[13]
But a few months later General Plumer had devised tactics which countered the pillboxes very successfully, and eventually the German machine-gunners found that it was better to come out and fight in the open, and even to surrender, rather than be cooped up and grenaded when our men got round to the entrance. Already in October captured documents showed that the German High Command were inclined to prefer their old methods to the new ones.[14]
The fight to reach the Passchendaele Ridge (the distant rising ground shown in [Plate 17]) lasted in effect from July to November of 1917. The Germans fought hard and well, but our chief enemy, as always in the salient, was the weather, and its effect in covering the whole ground with muddy slime.
The much-coveted Passchendaele Ridge is only about 120 feet higher than the level of Ypres; it is the continuation northwards of the rising ground which crosses the Menin Road at Gheluvelt and passes through Becelaere and Broodseinde. But, once attained, it affords a clear view over the flat Belgian country towards Roulers for many miles, just as in the hands of the enemy it afforded a clear view over Zonnebeke and St. Julien to Ypres.
The fight for the ridge was a long, tedious, and costly affair of many months, and although we gained it, and incidentally gained the knowledge of how to circumvent the pillboxes, the delays which had been caused by the weather conditions prevented us from attaining the full advantages that had been—quite reasonably—hoped for and expected.
PLATE V.