With the 18th Corps, the 1st Brigade Tanks were on several occasions signalled for by fairly distant parties of infantry, who proceeded to “set” them at strong points that were giving trouble. This system worked extremely well, and had a particularly impressive moral effect on the enemy. Several occasions are recorded on which enemy garrisons did not wait for the Tank which had been thus “whistled up” to get near enough to fire, but surrendered as soon as they saw it coming.
Our advance had continued for about ten hours, that is, till nearly three in the afternoon, when our enterprise seemed to have succeeded.
As early as nine in the morning we held the whole of our second objective north of Westhoek.
By the afternoon we had entered St. Julien, Frezenberg and the Pommern Redoubt, and had taken the crossings of the Steenbeek and Stirling Castle.
Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse had proved more difficult, but even here we held a footing on the ridge.
We had “riven the oak,” we were now to feel the force of the rebound.
That afternoon in a downpour of rain the enemy counter-attacked along the fronts of all three Corps. There was a fierce struggle, in which in many instances Tanks were able to do a good deal of execution.
We were shelled out of St. Julien. North of it we withdrew to the line of the Steenbeek, and we were obliged to fall back from all but the western outskirts of Westhoek.
All afternoon we slowly lost ground, yet when night fell we could still boast a battle well begun. It was, after all, never meant to be a one-day attack, and to-morrow we should start well. We had everywhere taken and held our first objective, that is, the low muddy ridge from which the enemy had so closely threatened the original Ypres arena.
The second flat valley and the higher ridge from Passchendaele to Staden now lay before us.