Before leaving the training area the company attended two noteworthy parades, one on the 19th September, when the Divisional Engineers assembled with full transport, and carried out evolutions under the C.R.E., and another on the 22nd, when the whole of the 3rd Division, less artillery and transport, was inspected by the Commander-in-Chief, F.-M. Sir Douglas Haig.
The march northwards with the 11th A.I. Brigade Group was viâ Blaringhem, Eecke and Poperinghe, to Ypres, which was reached on the 30th September. The company took over from the 529th Field Company, R.E. (3rd British Division) and billeted in cellars and shelters among the ruins just south of the prison. The horse lines were at Brandhoek, with, later, an advanced camp east of Ypres.
The night of the harvest moon at Poperinghe will always be remembered for a remarkable display of bombing by enemy aeroplanes. Uncomfortable as the situation was for troops crowded in tents, some amusement was to be derived from the efforts of certain machine guns, which, chattering hysterically whenever a Boche ’plane was caught in the beam of a searchlight, threw streams of tracer bullets at a target some thousands of yards out of range. No doubt it relieved the gunners’ feelings.
The great British offensive in the Ypres salient, to which the capture of the Messines ridge had been a prelude, had opened on July 31st, when the 3rd Australian Division captured “The Windmill” on the extreme south flank of the battle. After some pauses and delays, it was now, in the late autumn of 1917, in full swing. A constant succession of heavy, but comparatively shallow pushes, it might almost be called the Battle of the Roads, so much did the impetus of the attack depend on the use of the highways converging on the ruined town, and so enormous and impressive was the congestion of road traffic. The great road from Poperinghe to Ypres was covered day and night with streams of everything on wheels or feet which went to make or help an army, all dribbling in clouds of dust and profanity through the bottle-neck at Vlamertinghe. On the enemy side of Ypres the road best known to the 3rd Division was that which led to Zonnebeke. Here the congestion of traffic was complicated by the insistent attentions of the enemy artillery, which periodically pitted the route with shell holes and left the roadside littered with dead horses and broken vehicles, and sometimes with more dreadful wreckage.
Besides the limbers taking ammunition to the nearer guns, ration limbers and wagons laden with Engineer stores, the forward road was thronged with pack animals, which in hundreds carried ammunition to the less accessible batteries. On the outward journey they were led by dogged men on foot; returning light with the men in the saddle, the cavalcade stood not upon the order of its going, and no matter the rank of the pedestrian,
he unhesitatingly gave it the road. Particularly after the rain came was the road past Mill Cot to Kink Dump, Devils Crossing, and Zonnebeke, a place of evil memory.
For three weeks the company, working from Ypres, was continuously employed in the battle area in the divisional sector north of the Zonnebeke Railway. The 3rd Australian Division delivered a very successful attack on October 4th, when the Broodseinde Ridge was captured. When it was relieved by the 66th Division, the company remained in the area working with this division until after its attack of October 9th. The 3rd Division then returned to the line and advanced again on October 12th.
Early in the month the weather broke and torrents of rain converted the shell-torn earth into a dreadful quagmire. Tracks across the wilderness of mud and shell holes had to be reconnoitred, marked out and duckboarded wherever possible; roads patched up to carry the guns. The tracks were all marked by distinctive letters or names; two well-remembered ones were Jack and Jill. Strange materials were used for road making; the dead body of a mule or two might be seen tumbled into a shell hole and covered with the smashed up remains of some vehicle. Piles of shells were known to be used in emergency to hurriedly fill a hole in some urgently required roadway. Causeways were built for mules and men across the bog which marked the original course of the Zonnebeke stream, and many concrete dugouts repaired and made habitable. On all these arduous tasks the company was engaged and suffered a steady drain of casualties.
Under these conditions the possession of ample comforts funds, supplied chiefly by friends in Australia, contributed considerably to the comfort and efficiency of the unit, as it rendered possible the supply of hot drinks and food at all hours to the different parties, and of emergency chocolate rations to parties on exposed work.
Worthy of special note during this period was the work done by Lieut. J. M. Norton and a small party of surveyors in laying down an elaborate system of jumping-off tapes for the attack of October 4th, and a similar task carried out by Lieut. S. W. Matters previous to the attack of October 9th. On the 4th, Lieut. H. St. A. Murray and a party of sappers and attached infantry (the 11th A.T. Brigade had supplied a permanent working party of three officers and 100 other ranks who lived and worked with the company) pushed forward on the top of the Broodseinde Ridge immediately behind the attacking infantry, and dug and wired a number of strong points. The transport, both pack and wheeled, carried out very difficult and dangerous tasks under Captain O. B. Williams and Lieut. W. H. Thomas, M.C., and the work of the surveyors was also particularly arduous and