All our attacks that day and those of the French as well failed. Lizerne remained in enemy hands, and the last of the heroic two hundred Canadians had evidently fallen in St. Julien before night, for all sounds of firing from that direction ceased. Strive as they would, our troops had been unable to reach and succour them, though costly efforts were not wanting. Weeks and months afterwards anxious ones waited for word from some of that noble little band in St. Julien, but no word ever came from German hospital or prison camp. They had fought on to the last man, to the bitter end!
At night the Germans attacked Broodseinde, east of Zonnebeke, with great ferocity, but were driven back by our 5th Corps troops.
What was left of the Canadian 2nd Brigade was holding Gravenstafel, just north of Zonnebeke, and not far to the south-west of Passchendaele. The Huns poured mass on mass against the depleted ranks of the Canadians, who were compelled to fall back, evacuating Gravenstafel, but stubbornly disputing every foot of ground lost.
The night of Sunday, the 25th, closed in, with little in the situation to cheer us, except the knowledge that the entire vicinity of the Ypres Salient and the line to the north of it was crowded with fresh French and British troops and battery on battery of guns.
By Monday night the London Sunday papers had reached us.
What was our surprise to see that the London press was greatly cheered by the meagre French and British official reports, and united in condemning the German official reports, which were flatly characterised as lying inventions.
The German official reports were, as a matter of fact, in that particular instance, more correct than either the French or British official reports.
The French report declared Lizerne and Het-Sas to have been taken from the Huns. The Huns had never been driven out of either town.
The British report was vaguely optimistic, evidently bent on minimising the German gains. It was so worded that 999 men out of 1,000 would understand from it that most of the ground lost on the 23rd and the days immediately following had been won back from the enemy. Certain it was that no one would gain the idea from the British official report that the Huns had been steadily forcing our line back, that our counter-attacks had failed, and that the Ypres Salient was then so threatened that no one but a madman would deny that further reconstruction of our line around Ypres, involving the giving up of a large section of our front line had become a military necessity, to be performed at the earliest moment such a manœuvre could be carried out. Indeed, the section of our line to be abandoned must needs be far greater than that the enemy had won by his surprise gas attack against the French.
I do not wish to give the impression from the foregoing that the German reports were, as a rule, more correct than French or British official pronunciamientos. I think they were by no means so to be described. In matters of fact, as to captures of men or guns, or details as to bits of line lost or won, the Hun official reports were less often incorrect than some might think. Now and then, when dealing with some matter of conjecture, such as an estimate of our casualties, they were absurdly wide of the mark. The average French official report might err slightly as regarded detail, but was in the main most dependable. Our chief quarrel with the official reports as issued by the War Office to the British Press was that they were at times subject to more than one interpretation. Escaping actual inaccuracy, they did not always convey the impression at Home warranted by the facts at the Front.