"I saw some fellows in front of me," said a wounded lad of the Devons, "and I halloed to them because I wanted company and a bit of help. But they didn't hear all my halloing, and they went faster than I could, and I could not catch up with them because my leg was bad."
"It was water we wanted most," said a young Canadian, "and some of us were four days thirsty in the front line. No blame to anybody. It was the state of the ground."
"I had a poisoned finger," said a young field-gunner, "and my arm swelled up, but I couldn't leave the battery before the show, as they were short-handed."
Sitting round after the battle these men out of the slime, these muddy, bloody men, spoke quietly and soberly about things they had seen and suffered, and the tales they told would freeze the blood of gentle souls who do not know even now, after three years of war, what war means to the fighting men. But as they listened to each other they nodded, as though to say, "Yes, that's how it was," and there was no consciousness among them of extraordinary adventures, and neither self-glory nor self-pity. They had just done their job, as when their wounds heal they will do it again, if fate so wills.
What I have written about the Canadians is true of all English battalions who were fighting on each side of them, and to whom I devoted most of my message on the day of the battle. Those London Territorials, Lancashire troops, Artists Rifles, Bedfords, and the old county regiments of the 5th and 7th Divisions who were fighting around Polderhoek Château and on the way to Gheluvelt had the same sufferings, the same difficulties in bad ground, the same ordeal of shell-fire, machine-gun fire, and German counter-attacks. They showed the same courage, neither more nor less, and although the capture of Bellevue spur was the most important gain of the day, it was only possible because the English battalions on either side kept the enemy hotly engaged, and assaulted his lines of blockhouses with repeated efforts. The fighting of the Artists Rifles and Bedfords of the 63rd Division was typical of all the history of this day in hardship and valour. Even the German officers taken prisoners by them expressed their wonderment and admiration. "Your men are magnificent," they said. "They have achieved the impossible. We did not think any troops could cross such ground." That belief was reasonable. The stream of the Paddebeek had become a wide flood, like all the other beeks in the fighting ground. It seemed unfordable and impassable, and on the other side of it was the old German trench system with machine-gun emplacements. The 63rd plunged in, wading up to their waists, and horribly hampered while machine-gun bullets whipped the surface of the water. There was fierce fighting for Varlet House, a strong blockhouse, and the Artists and Bedfords, Royal Fusiliers and Shropshires swarmed round it, and finally routed the garrison. Desperate attempts were made against other strong points, and the men of the 63rd Division gained some of them, and captured about 140 prisoners.
Meanwhile on the left of our line, around the flooded areas to the west of Houthulst Forest, the French have made great progress on Friday and Saturday. The Belgians have made a dash too, and there was a gallant episode, not without a gleam of humour, when a small party of Belgian soldiers crossed the marshes in a punt, found the ground deserted by the enemy, and went forward at a hot pace to join up with the French in the freshly captured village of Merckem. The French themselves have cleared a wide tract of marsh-land during these two days' operations, cleared it of men and cleared it of guns, which the enemy had just time to drag away round a spit of land on the edge of the floods. These floods are very deep and broad above Bixschoote and below Dixmude, where the St.-Jansbeek slopes over by Langewaade and swirls round a peninsula of mud.
On Friday the French routed out the German outposts who guarded that mud-bank, several thousands yards in length, and yesterday made a bigger attack above St.-Jansbeek and Draeibank. Before their gallant infantry advanced through these bogs, for it is all a bog, the French gunners were in full orchestra, and played a terrible symphony on the 75's and 120's. Over 160,000 shells were fired by the "soixante-quinze" batteries at the German positions in the marshes and on the west side of Houthulst Forest. Then under cover of this fury of the fire the French infantry advanced in waves. In spite of the ground they went very fast and very far, and spread out in a fan-shaped phalanx between Merckem and Aschoop. Their field-guns are now able to enfilade Houthulst Forest on the western side, and the German guns north of that must be making their escape. It is an important tactical success, which will make Houthulst Forest less tenable by the enemy.
October 30
Following up the heroic capture of Bellevue spur, on October 26, the Canadians attacked again this morning on both sides of the Ravelbeek, working up from Bellevue to the top of Meetscheele spur on the left, and gaining Crest Farm on the right, up the main ridge of Passchendaele. If this ground can be held—and the taking is sometimes not so hard as the holding—almost the last heights of the Passchendaele Ridge are within our grasp, and all the desperate fighting of the last three months or more, the great assaults on the ridges by English, Scottish, Irish, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian troops, through bogs and marshes in the low ground, against concrete blockhouses and great numbers of machine-guns, against masses of the finest German troops fighting every yard of the way, and against incredibly bad luck with the weather, even as far back as August, will have given us the dominating ground in Flanders overlooking the plains beyond.