JLAINLT iSc WATER 
june 14, 1917 
Wytschaete Ridge 
By Hilaire Belloc 
AITER a prolonged, accurate, and increasingly 
intense bombardment, which bore witness to the 
perjX'tual increase of our material superiority 
over the enemy, (ieneral Plunvr's second army 
on Thursday last achieved the greatest individual success of 
the war upon the West since that war liecame a war of siege. 
In a lew hours by far the strongest of the German positions 
had been carried, everj' objective exactly reacheXl, six enemy 
divisions broken, some seven thousand prisoners taken, some 
30,000 of our opponents put out of action, every point of 
observation commanding the plain of Lille secured — and 
all this at an expense of not ten battalions. 
The victory, of high value in itself, will have an enhanced 
value if it helps to convince opinion at home — distracted and 
vitiated as it has been by uninstructed and violent writing — 
that the enemy's increasing exhaustion is determining the 
war. 
The 'operation which has thus so singularly illustrated the 
past week may best be described as the seizing of the " White- 
sheet " Ridge. The purpose of that operation, its success 
andthe consequences that should flow from it, will be the 
subject of this article. 
■ Whitesheet Ridge " is not a name given by the inhabi- 
tants of the locality to this piece of land, nor is it perhaps the 
most general term used by the British soldiers uf>on the spot. 
It is spoken of more often as the Messines Ridge. iJut 
" Whitesheet " — the EngUsh version of the Flemish Wyts- 
chaete — is a better chosen name, because this village stood 
upon much the highest point of the formation — nearly sixty- 
feet above Messines. 
Neither in itself, nor as referred to the British and German 
fronts, was the position nearly as simple a one as the \'imy 
Ridge. Upon a first glance at tne co:itours, the stu<lent of 
this locality is a little puzzled to grasp its peculiar importaiue. 
The comparative isolation uf the ndge does not stand out 
from the contours alone, and it Ls curious what a difference 
there is here between the map and the eftect produced by 
the ridge upon the e>e. To one standing below the ridge, 
or, better still, upon Mount Kemmel, and looking eastward, 
the line of the ridge against the sky is very clearly defined, 
and tlie slope up to it with its obstacles of wood and hedge 
is simple in character. It must be my task to try and trans- 
late the somewhat complex map into this real simplicity which 
the formation bears. ' 
The two contour lines which are here of .special use, are the 
40 metre and the bo metre. The water levels and flats of the 
district run roughly about 20 metres above the sea. The 
moated flats, for instance, upon which the ruins of Ypres 
stand are at about this level, and the manufacturing town of 
Armentieres at the other end of the line at much the same 
elevation. The rise of 60 feet, from the general 20-metrf 
level up to the 40-nietre contour, is gradual and presents few 
accidents of ground. But with the 40-metre contour one gets 
the star^ of these low hills and it may be taken everywhere as 
the base of the formation. The 60-metre contour marks the 
salient heights of the ridge, but if we emphasise it (as I 
have been compelled to do ujjon Sketch I ), it rather takes 
away from the true character of the elevation. The back- 
bone of the affair, so to speak, is the 50-metre contour. 
Nowhere in all its trace upon this hill did the heights on which 
the Germans had their observation posts fall below the 50- 
metre contour save at one very short saddle where the 
. canal and the railway from Vpres to Comines worked through 
the hill. Hill 60 at the northern end of the trace, shows by 
