BATTLE IN THE RAIN PROGRESS IMPEDED

FROM PHILIP GIBBS.

WAR CORRESPONDENTS’ HEADQUARTERS. FRANCE, FRIDAY. Once again our troops, English and Canadians, have attacked in rain, mud and mist. It is the worst of all combinations for attack, and during the last three months, even on the dreadful days in August never to be forgotten by the Irish and Scottish battalions, they have known that combination of hostile forces not once but many times, when victory more complete than the fortune of war has given us yet, though we have had victories of real greatness, hung upon the moisture in the clouds and the difference between a few hours of sunshine and the next storm. Today our men seem to have taken Polderhoek Château, the scene of many fights before. Many prisoners were taken from the 400 men of four German companies who were its garrison, holding the high ruins which looked down into swamps through which our men had to wade. They have fought their way to the vicinity of Gheluvelt. This ground is sacred to the memory of British soldiers who fought and died there three years ago. One of our airmen, flying low through the mist and rain squalls, is reported to have seen Germans running out of Gheluvelt Château, a huddle of broken walls now after three years of war, and escaping down the Menin road. Nothing is very definite as I write from that part of the line, as nothing can be seen through the darkness of the storm. Few messages have come back out of the mud and mist. Northwards, the Canadians have taken many pill-boxes and an uncounted number of prisoners. It was not easily and not without tragic difficulties down in the valleys, which have been split into swamps, and up the slopes of the Passchendaele spur, such as Bellevue, with its concrete houses which guard the way to the crest. North still beyond Poelcapelle, where the Broenbeek and the Watervlietbeek intermingle their filthy waters below, two spurs which are thrust out from the main ridge like the horns of a bull, south of Houlthulst Forest, English battalions have attacked the enemy in his stone forts through his machine-gun barrages, have sent back some of their garrisons and struggled forward up slopes of mud in desperate endeavour. On the left of us this morning, the French made an advance, where all advance seemed fantastic except for amphibious animals, through swamps thigh deep for tall men. This was west of a place falsely named Draeibank (Dry Bank), and surrounded by deeper floods, which would have made the most stalwart Poilus sink up to their necks and, with their packs on, drown. It was no good going into that, though on the right edge of the deep waters some French companies waded through and took a blockhouse with a batch of prisoners and machine-guns. West of Draeibank there were several blockhouses, but their concrete had been smashed under the French bombardments, and those Germans who had not been killed fled behind the shelter of the waters. Their barrage of gunfire fell heavily soon after the attack began by the French, but for the most part into the floods which our Poilu friends did not try to cross, so that they jeered at these waterspouts ahead of them. Our troops had a longer way, and a worse way, and it has been a day of hard fighting in most miserable conditions. Their glory is that they have done this. The marvel is that they were able to make any kind of attack over such ground as this. In those vast miles of slime there has been from six o’clock this morning enough human heroism, suffering, and sacrifice to fill an epic poem, and the eyes of the world with tears. Lord! It is wonderful what these men of ours will do, but in telling their tale they smile a little grimly in remembrance, or say just simply, “It was hell.” There is more in a battle than fighting. What goes before it to make ready for the hour of attack is as vital and demands as much, perhaps a little more courage of soul. Before this battle there was much to be done, and it was hard to do. Guns had to be moved, not far, but moved, and out of one bog into another bog, those monsters of enormous weight, which settle deeply into the slime. To be in time for this morning’s barrage, gunners already worn, craving sleep and silence, dog-weary of mud and noise after weeks and months of great battles, had to work like Trojans, divinely inspired to win another day’s victory, and they spurred themselves harder than their horses to this endeavour. They were often under shell-fire. Not only the gunners, but the transport men, all the pioneers and working parties, have done their utmost. All the battalions of fighting men, busy not with their rifles but with shovels and duckboards, worked in the mud – mud balking to all labour, swallowing up logs, boards, gun-wheels, shells, spades, and the legs of men, slime and filthy water slopping over all the material of war urgently wanted for this morning’s “show.” The enemy tried to harass the winding teams of pack mules staggering forward under a burden of ammunition boxes, rations, every old thing that men want if they must fight. Those mule leaders and transport men do not take a lower place than the infantry who went away today. They took as many risks and squared their jaws to the ordeal of it all like those other men.