I suppose these words of mine convey nothing to people who read them. How could they when for three years we have been talking in superlatives without exaggerating the facts, but without understanding them, as minds are numbed by colossal figures? But out here, seeing the flame of shell-fire night after night stretching away round a great horizon, and hearing from near and from afar the ceaseless hammer-strokes of great guns, and watching the starlit sky, as I watched it last night from quiet cornfields, all red and restless with winking lights leaping up in tongues and spreading lengthwise in a sullen glare, one does realize a little the monstrous scale of all this and the destruction that is being done among the masses of men in the dark and in the hiding-places of the woods and trenches.
Experts are wrangling over the numbers of the German reserves. Fantastic figures are given of the millions of Germans still under arms. Well, there is no exact data, and all we know with any certainty is that the enemy is still outwardly strong—strong at least in defence. But the magnitude of his losses during three years is revealed by the fact of to-day's fighting and the place in which it happened. It was in the autumn of 1914, during the first battle of Ypres, that the Germans attacked our Third Brigade at Langemarck, where our English troops made a great and victorious assault to-day. Three years ago they were the German lads of the 1914 class who marched up to our lines, linked arm in arm to be mowed down by the most deadly rifle-fire in the world, because those men of our old Army were the finest marksmen. Yesterday at Lens, or rather at Hill 70, there were boys of the 1919 class who helped to hold the German lines, and that fact is one great tragedy of German hopes and the great proof of her defeat.
Last night our English troops who were going to attack the village of Langemarck, the old ghost-village which has been wiped out of all but history, went across the Steenbeek stream and lay there waiting for the hour of their assault. They were all light-infantry men, the King's, the Duke of Cornwall's, Somerset, the "Koylies" (King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry), the King's Royal Rifles, and the Rifle Brigade of the 20th Division.
As we know now from captured orders a German regiment was ordered to attack our lines at 3.45 this morning. Only forty men of that regiment were seen advancing and they were annihilated. Our men went forward when there was light enough. Immediately on their right, in front of them, was the ruin of an old estaminet called Au Bon Gîte, made into a fortified emplacement and defended by machine-guns. It was a nasty place, and our men avoided it, and swept both sides of it and beyond, so that its garrison of gunners had to surrender. Keeping a steady line as much as possible over bad ground, they went forward, leaving the waves that followed them to deal with batches of prisoners who had been left alive after our bombardment of the night, and made their way toward Langemarck. Here they were in real trouble, but not from the enemy. It was the state of the ground that threatened them with the worst disaster. All round Langemarck the floods were out, and the heavy rains of the week had filled old shell-holes to the brim and made a bog everywhere. Men sank up to their waists as in the worst days of the fighting during the winter on the Somme. It was not water but wet mud that made their cold bath, and they had to use their rifles to keep themselves from sinking deep, and men on little islands of more solid ground had to haul out their comrades. All this meant loss of time, so that our barrage would sweep ahead of them and the German gunners would be able to do dirty work.
On the left of Langemarck the men were delayed by these bogs. On the right they were able to push up with great difficulty, but still to get on and work up to the village. The enemy ran as soon as they saw that our men were near. There were some spasmodic bursts of machine-gun fire, but the defence was feeble, and here, anyhow, the enemy had been demoralized by our frightful gun-fire.
A regimental commander, a full colonel, was taken here, and that is a rare bird to catch, as in most cases German officers of that rank are well behind the line. He was dejected and nerve-shaken, and spoke freely of the great losses of his men. They were men of the 79th Reserve Division who had been holding Langemarck, and they have suffered most severely, having lost large numbers of men in the previous attacks. Other prisoners came from the 214th Division, holding the line north of the Staden Railway—the railway to the ground above Bixschoote. The regiment which perhaps suffered worst of all was a battalion of the 262nd, which was broken to pieces in the British attack across the Steenbeek.
To the right of the attack on Langemarck our light-infantry men were successful, and in spite of concrete blockhouses and some deadly machine-gunning, won all the ground they had been asked to get. The men report that they saw large numbers of German dead, and that little groups of men fled before them as they advanced. Later in the morning the enemy rallied, and came back in counter-attacks, one of which seems to have come within ten yards of our men before it withered away under rifle and machine-gun fire.
It was on the right centre of the attack that, as I have said, the fighting was most uncertain. The Irish Divisions were heavily engaged here working towards Polygon Wood and the high ground thereabouts. They had to advance over frightful ground, and against the enemy in his greatest strength, because he is determined to defend these high slopes if he loses all else.