A French line division and some Territorials were brought up on the night of the 24th-25th, and were concentrated about Zillebeke. Meanwhile the 2nd Division made good progress to the north-east, and captured some guns and prisoners. On the 27th Sir John French went to the headquarters of the 1st Division to inquire into the condition of the 7th Division, which had been marching and fighting for a whole month, and was becoming very weak. He broke up Sir Henry Rawlinson's command, and the much-tried 7th Division was absorbed into the First Corps.
The Front at Ypres on October 27, 1914.
On the 28th there was a lull before the coming storm. The enemy was preparing for a mighty onslaught upon our whole line. About 5.30 the next morning a wireless message was intercepted, telling us what the Germans proposed to do. The Emperor had given orders that the line in front of Ypres must be broken at all costs, and three German corps were being massed for the purpose. The critical moment was at hand.
Early on the morning of Thursday, the 29th, a mass assault was delivered against the crossroads one mile east of Gheluvelt. All morning the tide of battle ebbed and flowed. The 1st Division was driven from its trenches, and for a time the German thrust seemed to have succeeded. Mr. Underwood thus relates an incident which took place when the outlook was black indeed:—
"As I was watching the woods on our left front towards the Gheluvelt-Menin road, I saw the Yorks retiring and the Gordons advancing. I pointed this out to the general, who immediately sent to find out by whose orders they were retiring. Presently, to our consternation, the Gordons came back farther down the road towards Gheluvelt; before we could do anything, the Yorks came streaming over the open ploughed land. The general galloped down the road to stop the Gordons, and I tried to stop the Yorks, who persisted that the order had been given to them to retire. We concluded that the order must have been given by a German officer, and formed them up along the road under a terrible shrapnel fire. They were being bowled over like ninepins, as the Germans must have seen them crossing the open. We tumbled them into the ditch alongside the road, and it was a pitiable sight to see the poor fellows who were still in the open and badly hit trying to crawl along towards our headquarters to take shelter from the hail of shrapnel bullets.... They were by now all lying out under the wall of the farm, and the place looked like a shambles. It was a splendid sight to see Lieutenant Jardine of the R.A.M.C. running out under a hail of bullets and bringing in one wounded man after another on his back.... Presently the shell fire died down a bit, and the men in the ditches alongside the road, having had time to recover, advanced once more to regain the ground which they had lost.... One poor chap of the Warwicks whom I spoke to, and had been very badly mauled, said, 'Well, sir, England can't say we did not stick it to the last.'"
In the counter-attack to which the Gordons were now advancing nearly the whole of the First Corps was engaged. Some very gallant charges were made, in one of which Lieutenant J.A.O. Brooke of the 2nd Gordons won the Victoria Cross and lost his life as you will read later on. About 2 p.m. the enemy began to give way, and by dark most of the line north of the Menin road had been recovered. The same day the Third Corps was heavily assailed at Le Gheir, in what our soldiers call "Plugstreet" Woods,[68] and there was desperate fighting beneath its ragged larches. Here, again, trenches were lost and won. The Middlesex were driven out; but the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders nobly came to the rescue, and against great odds recaptured the trenches and slew almost every German in them.
The attempt to break through to the south of Ypres was repeated with even greater vigour on the 30th. In the gray dawn a heavy bombardment was begun on the trenches held by our cavalry at Zandvoorde, a village about a mile and a half south of Gheluvelt. So fierce was the fire that no living thing could remain in the trenches. One troop was buried alive, and soon the whole division was obliged to withdraw to a ridge about a mile west of the village. This meant that the troops on the right were uncovered, and were obliged to fall back to preserve the line. While this movement was going on, the situation was about as serious as it could well be. The enemy had been reinforced, and had now gained possession of Zandvoorde. The Scots Greys and the Hussars were hurried up, and the ridge was held until evening, when the 4th (Guards) Brigade arrived and took over the line. They held it in trenches with water above their knees for twenty-three days.
The salient was sharper than ever now, and therefore even more dangerous than before. The weakest place lay between Gheluvelt and the corner of the canal near Hollebeke. Had the Germans reached the canal they would have cut off the British holding the salient to the north, and nothing could have saved Ypres. The Emperor was on the field and he had told his men that if Ypres were captured the war would be over, and the victory of Germany would be complete. So desperate was the situation that Sir Douglas Haig determined to hold the line from Gheluvelt to the corner of the canal at all costs. He moved up reserves to the rear of the line, and made other preparations to resist the great assault of the morrow.