Canada in Flanders, Volume II

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

June 5th

The casualties of the 7th Brigade had indeed been severe, totalling in all 45 officers and 1,051 men, and making up with those sustained by the 8th Brigade considerably more than 3,000, apart from the losses incurred by the 60th and 52nd Battalions of the 9th Brigade. The effect of the action can be seen by giving the rifle strength of the Brigade as it came out of the fighting. This was as follows:—Royal Canadian Regiment, 500; the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, 210; 42nd Battalion, 460; 49th Battalion, 450; or 1,620 to a Brigade, which, if it had been at the full strength of 900 rifles to a battalion, would have numbered 3,600, or nearly three to one of the actual survivors. They had left their trenches, however, sensibly improved, chiefly owing to the efforts of the 3rd Pioneer Battalion, commanded by Lieut.-Colonel Holmes, which all through the action continued to make good the new front line and to dig trenches in support of it. This work was indeed essential, as it must be remembered that the larger part of the new position had never been intended for defence at all.

Map—BATTLE OF HOOGE 5th TO 6th JUNE 1916

In the meantime, it became clear that the situation could not be left as it was. Officers' patrols had been out on the night of the 4th-5th and had located the enemy's position fairly accurately. Night, 4th-5th. But while the Higher Command was planning the counterstroke, the enemy moved suddenly against the only part of the front line which remained in our possession.

The knoll of Hooge, if it hardly formed part of Mount Sorrel Ridge system, was yet an eminence of great importance, for from it one could look straight down to the walls of Ypres. It had in consequence changed hands over and over again, until the chateau, stables, and tiny village were nothing but a rubble heap of bricks stained with the best blood of Great Britain and Canada. Its last adventure had been in the summer of 1915, when it was lost on July 31st and retaken by the 6th Division on August 8th. Since then, however, the advance trenches had been pushed forward until they were right at the east end of the village and looked down on Lake Bellewaarde. On the left the ground falls swiftly, too, to Bellewaarde Beek, on the other side of which was the 60th British Brigade. The line here was exposed and open to the Germans on the higher ground, and was only held by a series of bombing posts.

On the night of the 5th-6th the 28th Battalion came up to relieve the Royal Canadian Regiment. The direct way up to Hooge is the Menin Road, straight from the historic gate. But you will not take that way unless you are anxious for death, for it is ranged to the last millimetre. The battalion will turn outside the gate, which has seen so many armies and generations pass, and skirt the edge of the calm and stagnant moat. Then it will turn through the long grass and water meadows such as fringe the Thames, and finally into the communication trenches. After this descent it is a question of a long struggle up the communication trenches, of clawing one's way through abandoned telephone wires which conspire in the effort to strangle, and of climbing and leaping shell-holes where the German guns have struck the trench with accuracy. Finally comes the Menin Road again. The great causeway runs straight with the rectitude of a Roman road. But there is added to it modern engineering, which has raised it twenty feet above the ground on each side. The road is lined with poplars, now mostly decapitated and scarred. Now and again, as the relieving battalion advances, a high, shrill noise will be heard overhead, followed by the flash and detonation of shells among the shattered trees. The 28th Battalion, used to these manifestations, plodded steadily up to the relief of the Royal Canadian Regiment on the night of June 5th.

Night of June 5th.

There are three lines of trenches of great importance in the Hooge position. The front-line trenches are now pushed forward to the extreme limit of the village beyond the crater the British blew up in August, 1915—for these look down into the valley of the Germans, though they are, in their turn, somewhat commanded by the enemy's heights at Bellewaarde Farm. These trenches connect with the British on the left of this rise beyond Bellewaarde Beek, and on the right stretch as far as the gap which leads down to Zouave Wood.