8 
Land & Water 
April I 8, 1918 
and to prevent his action, as it developed, having too narrow 
a base and the salient crea'ed being too pronounced. He 
proposed, immediately he had obtained a rupture on the 
flit between 66 hune and Armentiferes to push on across 
the Lys, mushrooming out to the left and the right ; upon 
the left getting round the big Nieppe Wood and closing 
upon Hazebrouck, the second vital railway junction, and 
upon the right working up from the south belunc^the Messines 
Ridge, while further forces upon his right came into play 
against the same ridge from the east. With that ridge gone, 
further advance right and left turns the middle of the crescent 
of heights, gives him Bailleul, and brings him up towards 
Cassel, the great junction of road communication, as Haze- 
brouck is of railway communication. By that time, if the 
blow could be struck with sufficient rapidity, he would have 
the whole of the forces opposed to him between the hills of 
the Artois, which run from St. Omer to Calais, and the 
extreme northern front which runs round Ypres to the sea 
at Nieuport, disorganised and undone. 
We shall see in what measure he carried out this pro- 
gramme, and where and how it was in part — and, let us hope, 
finally — checked. 
The details of the action up to the moment of writing 
cover six days, Tuesday morning to Sunday night inclusive, 
and are as follows : — 
At 8 o'clock in the evening of Monday the 8th of April, 
a heavy bombardment opened upon a front of about 12 
miles from the neighbourhood of Houplines beyond 
Armentieres upon the north-east, to the La Hassle Canal 
upon the south-west, that is, over all the flat and marshy 
plain which extends southwards from the Lys River. This 
bombardment lasted eight hours, ceasing at midnight. The 
back areas were particularly heavily searched and the enemy 
employed gas very extensively, especially against the towns 
which were points of concentration far behind the Allied 
lines and also in Armentieres upon their front. From 12 
midnight to 4 a.m. the bombardment ceased ; but at 5 
minutes past 4 in the morning of Tuesday, April gth, just 
before dawn, up to a quarter past _$ in some places, and as 
late as half past 5 in others, a last intensive bombardment 
was delivered and was carried on not only along this line 
and with special vigour against the back areas, but far to 
the south of the La Bassee Canal, in order to prepare what 
was coming. The weather was very misty — as in the first 
great affair a month ago. 
At a quarter past 5 a.m., just as it grew light, the first 
German infantry attack was launched against Neuve Chapelle 
and almost immediately, that is within the next quarter of 
an hour, the whole line was at work from the La Bassee 
Canal right up to Armentieres. Under this pressure, the 
first, second and third lines in the centre, held by the 
Portuguese, were overrun. Laventie, a strong part of the 
organisation on the last or third line was reached by the 
enemy by about 11 o'clock, and though certain posts still 
held out for an hour or two later, some of them apparently 
even up to 2 o'clock, the centre may be said to have gone 
by noon, and this wide breach in the deferisive zone to have 
been created in the first six hours of the action. 
Meanwhile, it was essential for the enemy, if his full plan 
was to develop, that he should immediately reach B^thune 
upon his left. If he failed to do this, if this corner still 
held for any considerable time against him, the presence of 
the strong Messines Ridge on his right, coupled with this 
resistance upon his left, would cramp him within a compar- 
atively narrow gate, and though he might expand the area 
he should occupy beyond that gate and to the north and 
west of it, he would inevitably be checked in his advance 
unless the neck of the area were widened. Essential as 
it was for him to seize Bethune at the earliest possible moment 
in this first successful shock, he threw in directly westward 
towards against the point of Givenchy no less than four 
divisions out of a total eight (rapidly increasing to eleven) 
which he had put forward for his first blow. 
But at Givenchy a division which he had hoped to find 
weak from fatigue, the 55th from the western part of Lanca- 
shire and Liverpool, upset his plan. The ruins of Givenchy 
stand upon a very slight rise of ground, only just showing 
above the general level of that flat and marshy land. Fight- 
ing four to one the ruins were rushed by the enemy, appar- 
ently before noon ; but the Lancashire men retook them. 
Further masses of the enemy debouched from La Bassee and 
fought all day to re-obtain the place. During the night 
they once more entered the ruins, and were once more thrown 
out, and by Wednesday morning Givenchy still held, covering 
Bethune — covering, therefore, the important double track 
of railway by which communication is maintained from the 
south to Hazebrouck, and which comes nearest the enemy's 
Une (and is therefore most imperilled) at Bethune. This 
unique and splendid local defence of Givenchy modified at 
its very outset the course of the battle. Elsewhere the whole 
of the Tuesday was taken up by the enemy in reaching, 
and attempting to cross, the line of the Lys. He could only 
touch the river at the extreme of the salient he had created 
— that is, opposite Estaires, perhaps near Sailly, and opposite 
St. Maur, where there used to be a ferry, succeeded for many 
years past by a bridge. All these three points are approached 
by a road. To the left of these points the continued defence 
of Lestrem held him and on the right the continued defence 
1>\- the British of Fleurbaix. 
The Lys Forced 
The accounts are still somewhat confused, so that exact 
hours cannot be given ; but apparently the enemy forced 
his way across the Lys — at any rate, at the point of St. Maur, 
if not at other points — in the course of the afternoon or 
evening of the Tuesday, for it was during the night that a 
counter-attack threw him back across the river at St. Maur 
and in the suburbs of Estaires. There had been at the very 
end of Tuesday a sharp advance of the enemy beyond St. 
Maur for nearly a mile to the place called the Ferry Cross, or 
Croix du Bac. But the counter-attack in the night threw 
the enemy right back from there, and he did' not readvance 
to it until the next day. In the early morning of Wednesday, 
the loth, therefore, the second day of the battle, the position 
would seem to have been somewhat like this : — 
The 55th West Lancashire Division at Givenchy and un- 
named British troops at Fleurbaix held either post or corner 
of the big gap made where the triple line of the defensive 
zone between Laventie and Neuve Chapelle had given way in 
the overwhelming of the Portuguese divisions, which originally 
stood upon either side of Neuve Chapelle. 
The enemy had reached, crossed for a moment, then re- 
crossed during the night, and was now again fighting for the 
passage of the River Lys, and he created a salient of over 
three miles at his deepest part upon a front between Givenchy 
and Fleurbaix of nine miles, and, the defensive zone being 
gone, he was fighang in the open. 
So far, the only German army which had come into play 
'was that of von Quast — the ■6th Army. His command was 
apparently of the strength of 12 divisions, of which onlj 
8 had so been identified in the course of the fighting, though 
probably 11 had already appeared in the first twenty-four 
hours. But with the morning of the second day — Wednesday, 
April loth — a development of the utmost importance 
appeared, the ultimate fate of which was comparable upon 
the north to what the resistance of Givenchy had been upon 
the south. This development was the entry into plav of the 
4th German Army, lying to the north of von Quast, under 
the command of Arnim, and the attempt of this in co-opera- 
tion with Quast's t^oops to seize the Messines Ridge, and 
thereby to enlarge immensely the area of the push, give it 
elbow-room, and permit its far more rapid advance. 
The enemy apparently calculated, rightly enough, that the, 
Messines Ridge could hardly be taken by any direct assault 
from the east. He lay upon this morning of the Wednesday 
just to the east and beneath it from Hollebeke to the Lys 
before Warneton, and if he had struck from this line up the 
slopes unaided he might not hope to reach the summit. The 
full plan was, therefore, partly to threaten to turn the 
Messines Ridge from the south, while attacking directly from 
the east, von Quast's extreme right undertaking the first 
task, and von Arnim's divisions the second. 
At the same time, on the morning of the loth, apparently 
early in that day, the Germans, who had crossed the Lys at 
St. Maur, had already got so -far round to the east that they 
were in Ploegsteert and into the big wood to which that 
village gives its name immediately to the north. They thus 
already looked at the Messines Ridge from its reverse side. 
Nearly coincident with this movement came the blow struck 
by von Arnim upon the east. The attack blazed up from 
the south northward, beginning in the early morning, and 
by noon had reached the summits of the ridge at Messines 
and Wytschaete, while to the north-east von Arnim's men 
had taken the ruins of Hollebeke. 
There must have been a moment at and after the middle 
of this second day in the action — Wednesday, the loth — 
when it looked as though Messines Ridge and all that it 
meant might go. But the gth Division counter-attacked in 
the early afternoon, pushed well past Wytschaete, driving 
the enemy down the eastern slopes by some 500 yards. 
A harder task was involved in the clearing of Messines, nor 
was the site of that vanished village wholly retaken ; but 
by nightfall most of the summit was recovered, though the 
enemy remained just clinging to the further edge of it, and 
so remained apparently through the succeeding days. This 
