Scale 1:20,000.
As matters now stood, the whole of the 33rd Division was concentrated together, the artillery covering for once its own infantry on the Passchendaele Ridge-Crest Farm-Meetcheele Line. The batteries of the 156th Brigade all lay along the Langemarck-Zonnebeke road north-west of Zonnebeke, between Windmill Cabaret and Kansas Cross, and covered the right of the zone, while the 162nd Brigade supported the left zone from positions around Gravenstafel. "A" and B/156, however, moved their guns to the vicinity of Otto Farm on the 12th and 14th respectively.
Infantry action was at a standstill, for the mud and general condition of the ground precluded movement of any sort; in few places, indeed, was there any fire-trench at all, fortified shell-holes linked together in groups and half-full of water offering the only possible cover to the front-line troops. The forward system was almost completely cut off by a vast sea of mud which extended back to and beyond the battery positions and was traversed at intervals by narrow duckboard tracks, the sole means of communication from front to rear. Any smashing of those tracks, any detour from them to avoid shell-fire meant hours of struggling through the slime, while the wretched men who got wounded while crossing the morass were, as likely as not, engulfed in the mud and never seen again.
Infantry operations, it has been said, were at a standstill, but the same could by no means be recorded of the artillery. From dawn till dusk the enemy was for ever pounding away at our lines, raking battery positions from end to end and destroying the wooden roads which offered the only possible route for the supply of ammunition and rations. Gravenstafel, Kansas Cross and the road right back to Wieltje were in a continual state of eruption, while devastating shell-storms daily descended upon the battery area between Gravenstafel and Zonnebeke. It was a grievous time for the gunners; dug-outs were impossible, as water was met only eighteen inches below the surface, and pill-boxes were few and far between. Even the latter, with their doors facing towards the east, were by no means sure refuges, and it was while actually standing inside such an one that Captain Gallie, who had distinguished himself so wonderfully in the autumn fighting, was killed on December 14th. The only way to minimise casualties was to scatter a number of little shelters all around the battery positions and, by keeping the men thus separated, to reduce the damage which one direct hit alone could do. Yet even so the strain of being eternally wet and cold, of being for ever soaked with mud and under continuous shell-fire was tremendous, and, as far as was possible, detachments at the guns were relieved every four days.
There was, indeed, little for the men to do except to keep the gun-pits and ammunition serviceable, and to try to keep themselves alive. Firing was reduced to the minimum of registration, calibration and response to infantry calls, for it needed a full day's work by every man to keep the guns clean, to rebuild the gun-pits after their daily destruction by hostile shell-fire and to keep dry the ammunition which, even when it was not blown up by enemy bombardment, used to sink of its own accord in that bottomless mud which rendered almost any form of foundation useless. Moreover, every round fired necessitated the bringing up of fresh supplies from the wagon-lines, and this was work not lightly to be undertaken. As late as September 1920 the road from Wieltje to Gravenstafel was still but a faint track of ploughed-up earth winding across the shell holes and literally paved with the skeletons of horses and, in some cases, of men; it was one of the main arteries—and there were but few in that wilderness of mud—from the wagon-lines to the batteries, and, to the terrible cost of the drivers and teams, well the enemy knew it.
Thus, from December 4th, the batteries just barely existed; they had had a month's rest in the back area and knew that, for gunners, this would be considered sufficient to keep them going for a long time to come—hopes of relief, therefore, were not even entertained. At intervals the guns were registered on the Gasometers east of Passchendaele; at intervals they bombarded enemy positions around Moorslede, but mostly the detachments contented themselves with preparing for emergencies by keeping the guns as serviceable as was possible. It was a nightmare existence from which all ranks hoped that they might one day awaken, but the awakening was not yet expected.
It seemed, therefore, scarcely credible to the 162nd Brigade when, on December 19th, orders were received to march out next day to the wagon-lines. Foul as were the conditions in the line, a mere seventeen days of continuous action was never regarded by Higher Authority as sufficient to entitle a battery to a rest, and neither officers nor men had in their wildest dreams hoped to spend Christmas out of the line; yet such was now to be the case. On Thursday, December 20th, all batteries of the brigade had reached their wagon-lines in safety, and on December 23rd they marched back to Divisional reserve in a camp on the Poperinghe-Busseboom road, leaving their less fortunate comrades of the 156th Brigade to carry on the war in their absence. Less fortunate the latter certainly were, for they were destined to spend Christmas in action, but on the other hand the positions they were occupying were not so bad as those of the 162nd Brigade, nor had they been subjected to such violent shell-storms.
December 23rd to the 26th were spent by the 162nd Brigade in overhauling kit and equipment, in helping to build permanent standings in the camp they were occupying, and in celebrating the unexpected luxury of a Christmas in rest. On Christmas night a dinner for the officers was given at "Skindles" in Poperinghe, while on Boxing Night the batteries organised dinners for their men. On this day, also, the 156th Brigade was relieved by the 48th Army Field Artillery Brigade and came down to the wagon-lines, with the result that the whole of the 33rd Divisional Artillery was able to see out in peace the old year which held for it such mighty, such proud and such undying memories.
In peace the old year went out, but by no means in idleness. On Boxing Day orders had come for the preparation of ten reserve battery positions to cover the Army defence zone and to be occupied in the event of a German offensive on the Ypres sector, and every day before dawn working parties from each battery set out in motor lorries to Potijze Château, between which spot and Oxford Road the proposed positions lay. From December 26th to January 7th the work was carried out during every hour of daylight, for orders, inspired possibly by the fears of a German Spring offensive, were imperative that the work should be pushed on as hard as possible.
On January 7th the work ceased temporarily and one section per battery of each brigade went into the line again, relieving the 250th and 251st Brigades of the 50th Divisional Artillery. January 8th saw the relief complete, and once more the brigades were back in action, the 162nd occupying the same positions around Gravenstafel, the 156th remaining as before round Windmill Cabaret, Otto Farm (the pill-box where Captain Gallie of A/156 was killed) and Van Issacker's Farm, but with two guns of B/156 (Major Studd) and two 4·5 in. howitzers of D/156 (Major Jones) in forward positions for use as anti-tank guns. The front to be covered remained unchanged, while the "grouping" of the batteries showed but little alteration—Lieut.-Colonel B. A. B. Butler commanding No. 1 Group which consisted of the whole of the 156th Brigade and B/119, while No. 2 group (162nd Brigade) was controlled by Major N. G. Jervis from a pill-box east of Frezenburg. Lieut.-Colonel E. J. Skinner commanded the whole of the 33rd Divisional Artillery group which was made up of the 156th, 162nd and 119th Brigades.