The fighting yesterday east of Poelcappelle and on the right of the French by Houthulst Forest across the Ypres-Staden railway showed a curious inequality in the strength and determination of the German defence. The French themselves had easy going, swinging up from Jean Bart House across some trench works and through a cluster of blockhouses. The German artillery-fire was slight against them, so that their losses are very few—though they were held a while in the centre by machine-gun fire—and it seems likely that the French gas-shells, fired over the enemy's batteries before the attack, had had a paralysing effect on some of the German gunners. Whatever the cause, there was a strange absence of high explosives, and the line was not thickly held by the men of the 40th Division, who have lately come from Russia. One officer and a score of men were captured, and a number of dead lie about the blockhouses, killed by the French bombardment. The others fled into the forest. Behind them they left two field-guns.
East of Poelcappelle and on the right of our attack the German infantry were also weak in their resistance, and our men of the Norfolk and Essex Regiments who advanced hereabouts did not have much trouble with them at close quarters. What trouble there was came from a machine-gun barrage farther back, which whipped over the shell-craters and whistled about the ears of our assaulting troops. The heavy gunning that we have put over this ground for more than a week, with special concentration on strong points like the ruined brewery outside the scrap-heap village of Poelcappelle and the other blockhouses, had made this area a most unhealthy neighbourhood for German garrisons, and they had withdrawn some of their strength to safer lines, leaving small outposts, with orders to hold out at all costs—orders easy to give and hard to obey in the case of men dejected and shaken by a long course of concussion and fear.
A Bavarian division, the Fifth Bavarian Reserve, had been living in those pill-boxes and shell-holes until two nights ago, and whatever the German equivalent may be of "fed up" they were that to the very neck. Some of our Suffolk and Berkshire boys had taken prisoners among these Bavarians on days and nights before the attack, and these men made no disguise of their disgust at their conditions of life. Like other Bavarians taken elsewhere, they complained that they were being made catspaws of the Prussians, and put into the hottest parts of the line to save Prussian skins. Some of the Bavarian battalions have had an epidemic of desertion to the back areas, in the spirit of "I want to go home." A fortnight ago there was a case of thirteen men who set off for home. A few of them actually reached Nuremberg, and others were arrested at Ghent.
One strange and gruesome sign of trouble behind the German firing-line was found by one of our Cameronians the other day after an advance. It was a German officer bound and shot. Opposite Poelcappelle the German Command thought it well to pull out the 5th Bavarian Reserve and replace them two nights ago by Marines of the 3rd Naval Division, who are stout fellows, whatever their political opinions may be after the recent mutiny at Wilhelmshaven, from which some of them have come. On our left centre yesterday they fought hard and well, with quick counter-attacks, but opposite Poelcappelle they did not resist in the same way and did not come back yesterday to regain the ground taken by our men of the Eastern Counties.
The Norfolk and Essex battalions had to make their way over bad ground. In spite of a spell of dry weather one night of rain had been enough to turn it all to sludge again and to fill and overflow the shell-holes, which had never dried up. The Lekkerbolerbeek has become a marsh waist-deep for men, not so much by rain-storms as by shell-storms which have torn up its banks and slopped its water over the plain. Before the attack yesterday morning our air photographs taken in very low flights showed the sort of ground our men would have to cross. Everywhere the shell-craters show up shinily in the aerial photographs, with their water reflecting the light like silver mirrors. Higher up there are floods about Houthulst Forest extending to the place where the enemy keeps his guns behind the protection of the water, and no lack of rain-filled shell-holes on each side of the Ypres-Staden railway.
Bad going; but our battalions went well, keeping close to their whirlwind barrage of fire and keeping out of the water-pits as best they could, and scrambling up again when they fell over the slimy ground. Manchesters and Lancashire Fusiliers, Cheshires, Gloucesters, and Royal Scots; Northumberland Fusiliers, Suffolks and Norfolks, Essex and Berkshires—how good it is to give those good old names—went forward yesterday morning in the thick white mist, and took all the ground they had been asked to take whether it was hard or easy. It was hardest to take, and hardest to hold, on the right of Houthulst Forest and on the left of the Ypres-Staden railway. Here the enemy held his line in strength, and protected it with a fierce machine-gun barrage and enfilade fire from many batteries which were quick to get into action.
Houthulst Forest, in spite of all the gas that has soaked it, was full of German troops of the 26th Reserve Division, under stern orders to defend it to the death, with another division in support, and the Marines on their right. They had many concrete emplacements in the cover of the forest, from which they were able to get their machine-guns into play, and along the Staden railway there were blockhouses not yet destroyed by our bombardment, which were strongholds from which they were not easily routed. There was hard fighting by the Royal Scots for some huts along the railway, and after holding them they had to withdraw in the face of a heavy counter-attack, which the enemy at once sent down the line. Elsewhere the Manchesters had a similar experience, coming under heavy cross-fire and then meeting the thrust of German storm troops. They and the Lancashire Fusiliers behaved with their usual fine courage, and were slow to give ground at one or two points, where they were forced to draw back two hundred yards or so. The Cheshires and the Gloucesters were severely tried, but the Gloucesters especially held out yesterday in an advanced position, with the most resolute spirit against fierce attacks and great odds, and still hold their ground. At daybreak to-day, after all the exhaustion of yesterday and a cold wet night and heavy fire over them, they met another attack, shattered it, and took twenty prisoners. That is a feat of courage which only men out here who have gone through such a day and night—and there are many thousands of them—can properly understand and admire. It is the courage of men tried to the last limit of human will-power and sustained by some burning fire of the spirit in their coldness and their weariness. The Northumberland Fusiliers, at another part of the line, and the Cheshires and Lancashire Fusiliers dug in round an old blockhouse, using their rifles to break up the bodies of Germans who tried to force through. At night, or rather at eight o'clock last evening, when it was quite dark, the enemy regained a post, but could do no more than that, and it was a small gain. On the whole the progress made yesterday was good, and considering the state of the ground, still our greatest trouble, was a splendid feat of arms by those men of the old county regiments who are given the honour they deserve by public mention.
The enemy losses were heavy. All last week they were heavy, owing to the ceaseless fire of our guns, and the dead that lie about the ground of this new advance, to a thousand yards in depth, show that his men have suffered.