Crest Farm, on a knoll below the village of Passchendaele, is the outer fort of Passchendaele itself, and its capture exposes the greater fortress under the ragged ruins which stick up like fangs on the skyline of the ridge.
Without Crest Farm Passchendaele was unapproachable, and the capture of this hummock is of historical importance. But in order to take or hold it, as the Australians found, it was necessary that Bellevue and Meetscheele should also be ours. Both heights were taken this morning by the Canadians.
It was not a great battle in numbers of men, and the longest distance to go was not more than a thousand yards, but it was a hard battle, not won lightly, because of the desperate resistance of the enemy, the difficulty of the ground, the badness of the weather, and the physical hardships endured by the men. The enemy had relieved his troops who met the Canadians' attack on Bellevue on Friday last—the 11th Bavarian Division, who are now said to be on their way to Italy—although I saw one of their non-commissioned officers this morning, taken prisoner a few hours before, after he had been lying in a shell-hole for three days. He knew nothing about his division and nothing about the German thrust in Italy. Nor did he care what had happened over there, but was only glad to be out of the shell-fire with the hope that the war would end soon, somehow and anyhow. His division had apparently been replaced by the 238th, a strong and well-disciplined crowd of men, who knew the value of the Passchendaele Ridge, and fought hard this morning until the Canadians had forced their blockhouse when the rest of them ran back into Passchendaele.
The German Command probably expected an attack this morning. As usual, yesterday he shelled heavily over the neighbourhood of our tracks and back areas of the battle zone in order to hinder the getting up of supplies, and in the night he sent out his air squadrons to bomb the country about Ypres and try to play hell generally behind our lines. Our airmen were about in the night too. It was the night of the full moon, wonderfully clear and beautiful in this part of Flanders, and many tons of explosives were dropped over enemy dumps and batteries and routes of march. The weatherwise, who have been gloomy souls for some weeks, and no wonder, predicted heavy rain before the night was out, and a rising gale of wind. They were right about the wind. It came howling across the sea and the flats from somewhere in the west of Ireland, but it veered to the east later in the night and the rain held off until after midday. By that time our attack had gone away and gained the ground; and it is in their new positions that the Canadians and other British troops are now suffering the foul storm, with a cold rain slashing upon them. The night was cold for them, and they lay out in shell-holes, getting numbed and cramped and longing for the first gleam of light, when they could get on the move and do this fighting. It is the waiting which is always worst, and it was waiting under the heavy fire of big shells and shrapnel and whiz-bangs and gas-shells and machine-gun bursts scattered over the sodden fields in this wet darkness without aim, but sinister in its blind search for men. The carriers trudged through all this, stubborn in spirit, to get up ammunition and supplies. There was rum for the fighting men, and they thanked God for it, because it gave them a little warmth of body and soul in the cold quarter of an hour before an attack at dawn, when the vitality of men is low.
Some of the Canadians say that the enemy started to barrage before our own artillery gave the signal of attack by combined fire. Five minutes before the start, they say, hostile shell-fire burst over them. Men get this fancy sometimes when there is no truth in it, but it may have been true. They all agree that the German SOS flared up instantly the attack was begun, and that the enemy's gunners answered it without a second's pause. At the same time many machine-guns began their sharp tattoo from the blockhouses on the slopes above and from many hiding-places. In front of the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry there was a number of fanged tree-stumps called by the sylvan name of Friesland Copse. They expected one or two machine-guns there, but found a nest of them. It was a hornets' nest, not easily routed out. The German machine-gunners kept up a steady stream of bullets across their field of fire, and the Princess Pat's suffered in trying to rush the place. Small parties of them assaulted it with grim courage, and when they fell, or took cover in shell-craters, others made their way forward, trying to get round the flanks of the position. It was in that way finally that they made the last close dash upon the emplacements and destroyed them. Some of the German gunners surrendered here, but not many. Hard and fierce was the fighting at close quarters.
The Canadian troops pushed on to Meetscheele village—no village at all, as you may guess, but just a tract of shell-craters and a few mounds of broken brick about a few concrete chambers, with dead bodies of German soldiers lying huddled outside the walls. That is a village in the battlefields. The blockhouses gave trouble, for there were living men inside with the usual weapon which spat out bullets. So there was another struggle here, very fierce and bloody, and the place was only taken by groups of men who crawled round it in the mud, sprang at it out of shell-craters, and acted with individual cunning and courage. That at least is how some of these men described it this morning, when they came away with wounds. Beyond Meetscheele was another row of blockhouses on a road, and another fight, desperate and exhausting and bloody. But it was from that neighbourhood that the Germans began to run, and when they were seen running the Canadians knew that the objectives had been won. All that was on the left of the Ravelbeek stream, which is a No Man's Land of slime between the slopes.
On the right, which is the main Passchendaele Ridge, another Canadian Brigade was fighting up to Crest Farm. They, too, had to assault some "pill-boxes" and had to fight hard for their ground, but they captured Crest Farm and the farmer's boys, who were stalwart young Germans, and a number of machines with which they plough the fields for the harvest of death. These machine-guns and their ammunition store were used against the enemy by the Canadians, and helped to smash up the counter-attacks, which assaulted the new positions very quickly after their capture. On the extreme right of the Canadians the enemy opened a very heavy bombardment from the Keifburg spur, and it was so violent that special artillery action was called for, and a number of Australian heavies took measures to silence these guns. The first counter-attack developed at about eight o'clock, from the direction of Mosselmarkt, but this was dealt with by our guns, and did not reach the Canadian lines. Our airmen, flying in the gale, reported groups of men retreating in a disorderly way and the German stretcher-bearers were busy. At about 9.30 hostile infantry in extended order were seen advancing towards the front, and our guns again got busy. Meanwhile the Artists, Bedfords, Royal Fusiliers, and Shropshires of the 63rd Division, and London men of the 58th Division were fighting in the low swampy ground to the north of the Canadians. They have had a very hard time on both sides of the Paddebeek and in other swamps, where little isolated garrisons of the enemy hold their "pill-boxes" in a girdle of the machine-gun fire. The rain is now heavy, and a thick, dank mist lies over the fields, and what was bad ground is now worse ground. There is no aeroplane observation this afternoon, and the Canadians, who are holding the captured positions, can no longer be seen by the hostile air squadrons. This morning they flew very low over the infantry in places, dropping bombs and firing their machine-guns at groups of men. The battle is one of those called "a minor operation," but the ground taken by heroic effort is the gateway to Passchendaele.