"Pretty well," was the answer. "We have cut off four Boche guns with our barrage, though we only had a little way to go—on the left, you know."
"Big fellows?"
"No, pip-squeak. The usual seventy-seven."
It seemed that there had been a check on the left. Our men had come up against abominable machine-gun fire. On the right things were doing better. Our line was being pushed up close to Passchendaele, within a few hundred yards or so. Some prisoners were coming down—there had been a lot of bayonet fighting, and a lot of killing. The wounded are getting back already, most of them with machine-gun wounds, the worst of them with shell wounds. The New-Zealanders had hardly gone over before German flares rose to call on the guns. The guns did not answer for some little while; but instantly there was the chattering fire of many machine-guns; and from places above the Ypres-Roulers railway, and all the length of the Goudberg spur of the Passchendaele, where there were many blockhouses and concrete streets, there was poured out a sweeping barrage of bullets.
Our men, advancing on all sides of the Passchendaele Ridge and right up to the edge of Houthulst Forest, were everywhere checked a while by the swampy ground. The streams, or beeks, that intersect this country, like the Lekkerbolerbeek and the Ravelbeek, had lost all kind of bounds, and by the effect of shell-fire had flowed out into wide bogs. Here and there the men crossed more easily, and that led to some parts of the line getting farther forward then others and so to being enfiladed on the right or left. It is on the left that we have had most difficulty, round about Wolfe Copse and Marsh Bottom. On the right it is reported that some of the Anzacs have been seen going up across the slopes of Crest Farm, which is some 500 yards from Passchendaele village, on the heights of the ridge. At the present time it is impossible to tell more about this battle than to say it is being fought desperately. Our airmen are unable to bring back exact news owing to the darkness which has again descended, and all that is known so far is that our men are making progress in spite of the deadly machine-gun fire against them, and that they are resolute to go on. The enemy is fighting hard, and his Jaegers, with green bands round their caps, and the men of the 223rd Reserve Division, have not surrendered easily, though many of them are now our prisoners. It is raining again heavily, and the mists have deepened.
XXII
ROUND POELCAPPELLE
October 14
To-day there was a fine spell, though yesterday, after Friday's battle, it was still raining, and looked as if it might rain until next April or March. Our soldiers cursed the weather, cursed it with deep and lurid oaths, cursed it wet and cursed it cold, by day and by night, by duck-boards and mule-tracks, by shell-holes and swamps, by Ravelbeek and Broenbeek and Lekkerbolerbeek. For it was weather which robbed them of victory on Friday and made them suffer the worst miseries of winter warfare, and held them in the mud when they had set their hearts upon the heights. It was the mud which beat them. Man after man has said that to me on the day of battle and yesterday.