During the past forty-eight hours there has been hard and prolonged fighting north and south of the Menin road, and in spite of formidable counter-attacks by the enemy which began early yesterday morning and still continue, our troops have made a successful advance in the neighbourhood of Zonnebeke and southward beyond the Polygon Wood racecourse, which now belongs to the Australians.
It is south of that, by Cameron House and the rivulet called the Reutelbeek, that the enemy's pressure has been greatest, and where the battalions of the 33rd and 39th Divisions on the right of the Australians, including the Queen's, have had the hardest time under incessant fire and attack since dawn yesterday, but on their right Sherwood Foresters and Rifle Brigade men, also severely tried, have swept across the Tower Hamlets Ridge in the direction of Gheluvelt.
It was fully expected that any new endeavour of ours to advance beyond the ground gained in the battle of September 20 would be met by the fiercest opposition. The capture of Polygon Wood and Westhoek seriously lessened the value of Passchendaele Ridge, which strikes northward and forms the enemy's great defensive barrier, and it was certain that in spite of the heavy losses he has already suffered in trying to get back that high ground above Inverness Copse he would bring up all his available reserves to hinder our further progress at all costs.
For two days before yesterday he made no sign of movement in his lines, and was kept quiet by the breakdown of all his previous counter-attacks, which our men repulsed with most bloody losses to the enemy, so that their divisions were shattered and demoralized. The German Command used that time to drag the broken units out of the line and to replace them or hurry up to their support the reserves who had been waiting in the rest areas behind. These men were rushed up by motor-omnibus and railways to points where it was necessary to take to the roads and march to the assembly positions ready for immediate counter-attacks. Those were in the Zandvoorde and Kruiseik neighbourhood, south-east of Gheluvelt, ready to strike up to the Tower Hamlets Ridge while others could be assembled behind the Passchendaele Ridge.
No doubt our attack for this morning did not leave out of account the strength of resistance likely to be offered. The enemy showed signs of desperate anxiety to check us on the Polygon Wood line, and the ground going south of it to the Gheluvelt Spur, and he made a great effort by massed artillery to smash up the organization behind our lines, and by a series of thrusts to break our front. On Monday afternoon, increasing to great intensity yesterday, he flung down his barrage-fire in Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse, fired large numbers of heavy long-range shells over Westhoek Ridge, Observatory Ridge, Hooge, and other old spots of ill-fame, and concentrated most fiercely on the ground about Cameron House, Black Watch Corner, and the Tower Hamlets.
At six o'clock yesterday morning, supported by this terrific fire, he launched his first attack on the Surreys, Scottish Rifles, Middlesex Regiment, and other troops around the Tower Hamlets, and owing to their losses they were obliged to fall back some little way in order to reorganize for an assault to recapture their position. These fought through some awful hours, and several of their units did heroic things to safeguard their lines, which for a time were threatened.
While they were fighting in this way the 4th and 5th Australians, on the high ground this side of Polygon Wood racecourse and the mound which is called the Butte, also had to repel some fierce attacks which opened on them shortly after eight o'clock in the morning. The enemy was unable to pierce their line, and fell back from this first attempt with great losses in dead and wounded. It was followed by a second thrust at midday and met the same fate. At two o'clock in the afternoon the Australians sent some of their men to help the Surreys and the English troops on their right, who were passing through a greater ordeal owing to the storm of fire over them and the continued pressure of the enemy's storm troops, who were persistent through the afternoon in spite of the trails of dead left in their tracks. It was a serious anxiety on the eve of a new battle, but it failed to frustrate our attack. All the area through which the enemy was trying to bring up his troops was made hideous by artillery-fire and the work of the Royal Flying Corps.
It was a clear moonlight night, with hardly a breath of air blowing, and all the countryside was made visible by the moon's rays, which silvered the roofs of all the villages and made every road like a white tape. Our planes went out over the enemy's lines laden with bombs, and patrolled up and down the tracks and made some thirty attacks upon the German transport and his marching columns. All his lines of approach were kept under continual fire by our guns of heavy calibre, and for miles around shells swept the points which marching men would have to pass, so that their way was hellish. Our aircraft went out and flew very low, and dropped bombs wherever they saw men moving through the luminous mists of the night. Behind our own lines air patrols guarded the countryside. They carried lights, and as they flew in the starlit sky they themselves looked like shooting stars until they dropped low, when their planes were diaphanous as butterfly's wings in sunlight. On the battlefield then was no unusual gun-fire for several hours after dark. Guns on both sides kept up the usual night bombardment in slow sullen strokes, but at least on the Australian front it was not until about 4.45 in the morning that the enemy opened a heavy barrage in Glencorse Wood. The Australian troops were already massed beyond that ground for the attack which was shortly due. On the north, up by Wurst Farm, on the lower slopes of the Gravenstafel, our London Territorials were also waiting to go "over the bags," as they call it. Against them the German guns put over a heavy barrage, but that line of explosives failed to stop or check the assault.
It was almost dark when our London lads went forward through a thick ground mist, which was wet and clammy about them. Our artillery had opened before them the same monstrous line of barrage-fire which they had followed on the 20th. and they went after it at a slow trudge, which gave them time to avoid shell-craters and get over difficult ground without lagging behind that protecting storm. That violence of fire was as deadly and terrifying this morning as on that other day. Through the mist our men saw the Germans running and falling, and many of them did not stay in the blockhouses, though it was almost certain death to come out into the open before the barrage passed. There were dead men in many shell-craters before our men reached them, and others afterwards, as they passed through clumps of ruin which had once been hamlets and farms. There was such a mess of brickwork and masonry at Aviatik Farm, where Germans hiding in concrete walls fired machine-guns and rifles for a time until the British troops closed on them.
Something like 150 prisoners were taken in this section of the attack, and one of them was a queer bird who belonged to the sea. That is to say, he had been a sailor on the Dresden and was in the battle of Falkland Island and off Coronel, where he was picked up by a Swedish boat and taken back to Germany. To his disgust he was put in the 10th Ersatz Division, and now, after his soldier life, wants to work in a British shipyard. He was surprised at the food given to him, and thought it was a bribe to get information from him, believing that England is agonizing with hunger.