October ii, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
the Broods<n'nde cross roads), while between Passchendaele 
\illage itself and the Britisii line at its nearest point there was a 
distance oi rather more than 3,000 yards. This last -action 
has changed the line as follows : 
On the southern end, upon the Menin Road, the British 
line has got right down the further slope to the outskirts of the 
village of Ghe'hivelt. It has carried the whole of the bank in 
front of Zonnebeke. seized the ridge at the Broodseynde cross 
roads, and occupied the siunmit all along the Paaschendaele 
road to a point 1,000 Aards up that road northwards and a 
little short of the passage of the Koulers Railway across the 
rTdge near the hamlet of Xieuwemolen. Further north, tlie spur 
called the Abraham Heights by the British army, has Ix-cu 
seized ; also the ruins of the liamlet ol Gravenstafel and those 
of the \'illage of Poelcappelle some two miles east of Lange- 
marck. The general result is, first, the complete clearing 
of the southern pillar, the heights in front of Gheluv'elt 
and the highest part of the ridge. The summits here were 
seized when the first blow wits delivered a fortnight ago, 
and now the slopes on the far side are secureh' in British 
hands. In the centre the change is still more striking. 
There the Broodseynde Cross roads m the very centre iif 
the ridge are held and passed, and from this point, though 
it is but 50 or 60 feet above the ])lain. one sees all ITanders. 
It is a clean \iew broken only by the isolated lump of 
Moorslede, which is of the same height as the Passchendaele 
Ridge and about two miles from its sunimit. The command 
of Broodseynde connotes direct observation of a sort which 
had not yet been seized since the present actions began, 
and which may be compared to that obtained when the \'imy 
Ridge was carried last spring. There now remains nothing sa\e 
the northern edge of the ridge on which the ruins of Passchen- 
daele are perched to' be occupied. Meanwhile another 
feature in the advance which wiU not be missed is the serious 
increase of the salient now driven into the German positions. 
That saliept cannot become much deeper without com- 
pelling the enemy to modify his line and that is, of course, 
the object of the whole movement. If or when British forces 
seize the whole ridge and the slopes upon the eastern side. the 
strong defensive position which the enemy has ultimately 
depended upon the whole of this autumn with the forest of 
Houthulst as its northern pillar and the heights of Gheluvelt 
as its southern one, will have gone. To what kind of retire- 
ment the enemy ma\' later be coni{Jelled is a matter of 
conjecture save to those who have the advantage of seeing 
the photographs token by aircraft behind the enemy's lines. 
The Frerich Press has given us the mentictn of a new line 
which, it seems, is being prepared as far back as Rouhrs, 
but one has 'only to look at the map of V\ ustern Belgium 
as a whole to see the grave political and perhaps strategical 
importance of compelling a retirement here and to under- 
stand why the enemy has fought so very hard to maintain 
the heights, which he is gradually losing. 
Importance of Lille 
The great importance of Lille, both politically and strategi- 
cally is now familiar to everyone. It is the neCessarv pivot 
upon which any further retii^ement to the south of that town 
must be conducted, and its long occupation has formed -a 
political asset of the gravest sort. To the nortli Ostend and 
north of Ostend Zebrugge have a value to the enemy which 
only those can estimate who are acquainted with the maritime 
problem, which I do not pretend to understand. Blit it is 
universally granted that the possession of this strip- of the 
Belgian coa.st is of special advantage to the enemy and a corre- 
sponding weakness to ourselves. Saw if the salient in 
Flanders be much further advanced, if it is true that the line 
in the neighbourhood of Roulers is being prepared as the ne,\t 
defensive chain of positions, the position of Lille becomes 
difficult, and so does that of Ostend. We must not build too 
much upon a mere g(;ographical coasideration of this'sort and. 
of course, the mere occupation of the ridge would not in itself 
pro\oke a retirement, it does not represent so pronounced a 
salient as all that. But even if the salient were pushed right 
on to the plain beyond, the war has taught us what e.xtra- 
ordinarv- positions can Ix" chmg to bv the modern defensive. 
On the older principles anyone would have said, for instance, 
that the breaking of the Austrian line on the mountain plateau 
north of Gorizia would have involved a general retirement to 
the south and perhajjs e\-en have uncovered Trieste. Under 
modem conditions nothing of the sort has happened. Half the 
plateau has been lost, but the line to the south stands as 
securely as though no such movement had taken place. What 
is perhaps of more iniixjrtance is the verv serious los.ses iur 
tlicted upon the enemy by this action. These losses were far 
graver than those r.f the two previous actioas, and the cause 
f)f so exceptional a casualty Hst was the fact ttiat the enemy 
was caught by the British advance in the act of preparing a 
great counter-attack. 
Three German divisions had been concentrated during 
\\"ednesday night for a counter-attack to be deli\-ered 
apparently a couple of hours after the moment for which the 
British ad\'ance was planned. There was here apparent the 
drawback to the new defensive tactic which the enemy has 
developed in the course of the late summer and autumn. 
The policy of holding the front line with as few men as possible, 
of depending upon isolated strong points, of organising the 
craters and abandoning the (ildiT trench system, saved both 
men and material whenever the immense superiority of the 
British artillery asserted itself. But it compelled the enemy 
to increase his depth and to mass both more slowly and further 
off for his counter-attacks. They lost by this in their power 
to surprise and correspondingly increased the power of theit 
opponents to surprise, and such a surprise they suffered upon 
this Wednesday morning, l-ixeryone of these tliree divisions 
or, at any rate, of their attacking troops crowded on the narrow 
front between the Kcutelbeek and the neighbourhood of 
Zonnebeke was caught first b\- the British barrage and ne.vt 
by the advancing infantry. The (ierman attack was planned 
for six o'clock. It was organised upon a two-mile front from 
near Zonnebeke to the southern liiiiits of tlie Polygon Wood, 
and its three divisions were in their order from north to 
south the Fourth Guards Division, facing Zonnebeke ; 
south of this the 45th Reserve Division north of Polygon 
Wood, iuui (ai)parently) opix)site Polygon Wood the ibth 
Division. The enemy put over a barrage at half-past 5 pre- 
paratory to his attack. The British baixage opened shortly 
after, completely disarranged his plans and the British troops 
were right in the midst of l^iis concentration before the surprise 
was fully appreciated. 
Details of the Attack 
The British iidvance was so far as one can judge from the 
correspondents in the following order : 
On the extreme left, north of Langemarck, Irish troops, 
Fusiliers, worked forward along the railway embankment 
through very bad marshy giound ; next to them on their right 
were troops from the Midlands, who also had difficulty with 
the ground, but none the less took and held the^ruins of Poel- 
cap{)elle. To the right or south of these again Xew Zealand 
troops carried Gravenstafel and the low spur called the 
Abraham Heights. Sonjewhere where the MidJanders and the 
New Zealanders touched there was a particularly difficult 
piece of marshy ground on either side of the Stroombeck and 
one of the pointsof resistance most remarked was the German 
machine gun position in the ruins -of Wellington Farm, 
This was carried, liowever, and the line advanced as the sketch 
map shows, some hundred yards beyond. In the centre of 
the region of Zonnebeke and down to Polygon Wood where 
the German attack was to have been delivered, were the 
Australians, and to their right again, from Polygon Wood to the 
Menin R(jad, were Fnglish West Coimtry troops and more 
Midlatiders. But I ant not clear whether there were not 
• l-lnglish troops also to the north of this with the Australians, 
' for I note that one correspondent talks of English troops from 
the Midlands having carried Noordemhoek, having difficulty 
with the resistance the enemy put up at Retaliation Farm. 
The German order of battle, apart from the three divisions 
just mentioned, who were to have taken part in the gieat 
attack, consisted, on the north of the Zonnebeke regioii auH 
apparently opposite the Xew Zealanders, of the 20th DiVisioh 
recently brttught West from the Russian front, and beyond 
them to the north again the loth Ersatz. To the south, 
beyond Polygon Wood there was, on the German side, a 
curious situation. The German line here, up t(j the Menin 
Road, seems to have been held by the i<)th Division of Reserve 
recently brought west from the Russian front. But appar- 
ently they were being relieved at the very moment of the battle 
by the Sth Division. There was consequently very, great con- 
fusion : prisoners from both dixisions were taken freely and 
the units appear to have got hojielessly mi-xed. 
But for the matter of that, confusion was the note of the 
enemy's line almost everywhere after the first shock, and 
particularly from Zonnebeke southwards where the German 
attack was to have been deliw-rcd had not the British fore- 
stalled it. The considerable concentraticm of men here, 
caught first by the barrage and then by the advancing in- 
fantry, accounting as we have seen for the very hea\-y losses 
and also for the complete disarrangement of the enemy's plans. 
When the enemy re-acted, his main effort was made, as 
might have been expected, against the southern wing between 
the Poh^gon Wood and the, Menin Road vyhere lie has always 
thrown- in the greater part of his strength. There were no 
less than six counter-attacks in this region between three 
o'clock and dark on the afternoon of the first day's fighting, 
the Thursday, and another strong counter-attack on the morn- 
ing of the Friday after verv' hea%-A' shelling all night. The 
total result of this pressure exercised upon the British 
