Though the battle of Menin road had practically ended, the British continued to add slightly to their gains, and to strengthen their positions. North of Langemarck in Flanders they won additional German defenses in the morning of September 23, 1917, and took a number of prisoners. Since the offensive began on the 20th, the British had captured 3,243 Germans, of whom eighty were officers.
It was in the course of the fighting in Flanders that the Germans employed a new kind of frightfulness in some attacks. British troops reported that they were fired on by "flaming bullets" that set the clothing afire. It was related that men struck by these bullets had to be rolled in the mud to extinguish the flames.
During these days of busy fighting on the British front in Flanders French troops along the Aisne and the Meuse Rivers were constantly engaged in local fights with the enemy, though no important operations were attempted. The French command was exceedingly careful not to waste men unless there was some highly important advantage to be gained, contented to act on the defensive until a master stroke could be delivered. The German troops were not spared in the same way, but were constantly driven forward by their inexorable masters and lost heavily in futile attacks.
On September 24, 1917, the Teutons took the offensive at an early hour in the morning. On the right bank of the Meuse four German battalions, supported by special assaulting troops, made a drive against French trenches north of Bois le Chaume, along a front of about a mile and a half. The French "75's" broke the front of the attack, but in the center some trench elements were pierced by the Germans and violent fighting ensued. It was a short, sharp struggle at close quarters, when the French forced out the invaders and reoccupied the positions. Two other German attacks on the same front were made in the afternoon in which they gained nothing, while the French took fifty prisoners.
A more ambitious attempt was made on the same day to force the French from their positions that extended from the northwest corner of Fosses Wood to the eastern fringe of Chaume Wood, in the Verdun area. The Germans began the assault with sprays of liquid flame, which was followed by a furious grenade attack and bombardment. The intrepid French troops dashed out to meet their assailants and with bayonet and hand grenade drove them in disorder back to their trenches. There were numerous hand-to-hand struggles between the lines. The Germans made extraordinary efforts to regain lost ground around Hill 352, which offered every advantage for observation, but they were unable to break through the steel wall of French resistance. At Bezonvaux, and to the south of Beaumont, attacks were made in the hope of distracting attention from the real objective, but here the French Colonial battalions were on guard, veterans known for their dash and daring, who hurled the enemy back to his own lines, leaving heaps of dead on the field.
While the French troops, fighting against overwhelming odds, continued to hold their lines inviolate, came the painful news that their most famous aviator, Captain George Guynemer, had been killed by the enemy.
Guynemer had won world-wide fame by his daring exploits. At the time he was reported missing he had a record of having destroyed fifty-two German machines. Two years before he was a simple soldier. He entered the army as a volunteer after having been rejected five times by the medical inspectors. One of his most striking achievements was the shooting down of three German aeroplanes in less than three minutes in September, 1916. Captain Guynemer operated his aeroplane alone, serving both as pilot and gunner. He was twenty-one years old.
At daybreak on September 26, 1917, Field Marshal Haig's troops made a heavy attack against the German positions east of Ypres on a six-mile front in which they won an advance ranging from half a mile to a mile in depth. The offensive was started along the major portion of the lines reached by the British on September 20, 1917, extending from east of St. Julien to southwest of Gheluvelt. The most important points involved in the new offensive were east of the city of Ypres, between the Ypres-Roulers railway and the Ypres-Menin highway, as was the case in the previous week. Here the Germans held elevated positions on ridges and in forests, the vital points of their defenses in Belgium.
The Australian, Scotch, and English troops engaged in this new offensive had a desperately hard road to travel, forcing their way over sodden and flooded ground among steel and concrete redoubts heavily manned with machine guns. On every elevated point and in every scrap of woods the Germans had established a vast number of rapid-firing guns.
The main British attack was directed against the German front in the Zonnebeke region. The village was stormed and the Germans were thrust back nearly a mile.