May 9, 191 8 
Land & Water 
trace of 17,000 yards, or nearly 10 miles. The points to be 
particularly noted upon it for the purpose of understanding 
the action are, reading from east to west, that is, from the 
Allied left to the Allied right, the following : First, the 
Ypres Canal, with its sharp elbow at Lock No. 8, which had 
been lost previously to the battle. The line started here 
from the latter end of the long straight reach of the Canal, 
which runs up to Ypres itself past Lock No. 9. It ran through 
the ruins of Voormezeele, and thence up to Ridge Wood ; 
thence behind Vierstraat, along the Kemmel Beck, at the 
bottom of the slope which leads up to I,a Clytte, and climbed 
up over the saddle between Kemmel and the Mont Noir. 
passing through Locre Hospice ; thence along the base of 
the hills covering the Wolfhoek Wood, and so to Meteren. 
There was a dense mist that morning when the German 
infantry was launched at times varying with different parts 
of the line from half-past 5 until 7. Against what may 
have been 6 or may have been 7 Allied divisions in line, 
a total of perhaps 13 divisions* was used in the German 
offensive, of which 11 have been identified ; 6 against the 
French, under Eberhardt, including the 233rd, the 4th 
Bavarian, and the Alpine Corps, which is equivalent to no 
more than a division. Five and a fraction against the 
British on the left (the German right), part of the 7th, the 
25th, 49th Reserve, the 3rd Guards, the 19th Reserve, and 
the 56th. The remaining two were, I presume, used upon 
the extreme right against the Australians. But on this the 
messages received are so far confused or doubtful. 
While the attack with 6 divisions against the French was 
being made by the Corps-Commander Eberhardt, that with 
5 divisions against the British was being made under the 
orders of another corj)S-commander. It was a distinctly 
divided action : the right of the Germans to hold the British, 
the left under a separate command to divide the British 
from the French. The density of such an attack is always 
to be noted. It was, if anything, somewhat under the 
customary extreme density of the German assault, which 
has reached more than eight bayonets to the yard. In the 
action with which we are dealing the average from the Ypres 
Canal to the French right beyond the hills was more like 
six bayonets to the yard. 
Following what is now his almost invariable tactic, the 
enemy put his chief weight into the first blow, and was so 
far successful as to achieve two j)reliminary advances ; one 
of which was of secondary importance, but the other critical. 
The first of these was a thrust through Voormezeele ruins, 
and between them and the Ridge Wood, a short sector held 
by Lancashire and other troops. The idea was to 
turn the obstacle of the wood by the right or east. The 
attack forced its way through Voormezeele village itself, 
and apparently to the northern edge of the ruined houses, 
but no further. Lancashire men in the Ridge Wood itself 
kept off the enemy all morning, and Yorkshire and South 
African troops immediately to their right held this western 
obstacle flanking Voormezeele intact. 
. The second, as I have said, was of a more critical character. 
It was directed against the French left and the point of 
junction between the British and the French divisions. It 
pushed the French back through Locre, and at one moment 
reached the extremely important point which the British 
soldiers call Hvde Park Corner, where five wavs meet, on the 
• There is some doubt about two of these— the 31st and thi 107th- 
saddle between the Scherpenberg and the group of hills the 
Germans were desiring to turn and occupy. This meant 
not only a serious advance of well over a thousand yards, 
but a wedge stuck in at the most vital part of the line between 
the two Allies. Another 1,500 yards, if it had been occupied 
and held, might have meant the loss of the hills to the left 
and to the right ; the Scherpenberg might have been turned, 
and so might the mass of the Mont Noir and the Mont Rouge. 
The Germans reached this point a little before noon. But 
there came a counter-attack in the early afternoon from the 
French, which not only restored the position, but ultimately 
swept the Germans back to points from 1,000 to 1,500 yards 
behind those from which they had started. All the rest of 
the day the German efforts to re-advance, including four 
separate massed concentrations and innumerable smaller 
groupings, were broken by the French fire with very heavy 
loss. Before dusk the fighting had completely died down, 
and the heaviest attack delivered by the enemy since the 
great tidal wave towards Amiens was checked had been 
completely broken and defeated. 
Special mention has been made in dispatches and public 
correspondence of the heavy trial to which the new young 
drafts were put in the British units, especially among the 
Leicesters, and the gallantry with which this severe strain 
was met. The men had slept and worked in their gas-masks 
continuously, and had been subjected to a more appalling 
bombardment than any hitherto experienced. 
A notable feature in the German attack upon the French 
in the centre was the copying of the EngUsh tactic of very 
low-flying aeroplanes. 
Lastly, it must be remarked that in this battle the deter- 
mination to achieve an immediate success led the enemy to 
return to his old tactic of densely massed formations, with 
corresponding losses, from which he had departed during his 
successful effort against Mount Kemmel, where he had acted 
rather by the new method of "infiltration" with numerous 
isolated and successive machine-gun groups. 
It is impossible to estimate even in the roughest -way the 
losses sustained in this cUsaster. He must have put in to 
the actual shock, excluding the plain south of the hills, some 
80,000 infantrj', and possibly somewhat more. His casualties 
may have amounted to a quarter of these or more.^The 
effects of such a set-back were seen in the complete absence 
of movement upon his part for five full days up to Saturday 
night (on the dispatches of which this article is written). 
Roughly speaking, the defensive worked on this occasion 
with forces much less than two-thirds, but probably slightly 
more than half those of the offensive. The result was in 
part due to this increase in covering and in part to the arrival 
of ample French gun-power. 
Among the German units specially weakened was the 
3rd Guards, opposite to the British 25th Division in the 
centre. The Kemmel Brook ran between them, the British 
Border Regiment holding the open sloping ground to the 
north ; the German Guards being compelled to concentrate 
as best they could under the cover of a few ruined huts upon 
the open slope beyond and to advance down it. In this 
attempted advance they suffered very heavy losses indeed, 
and apparently never got into contact ; the execution being 
specially effected by the coolness and accuracy of fire on the 
part of the Border Regiment, which is signalled out for 
special mention in this connection. 
Appearance of the German Class 1920 
As the question of men is at the bottom of the 
whole problem with which the Allies and the 
enemy equally are confronted, we may say that 
a piece of news received in London on Wednes- 
day evening last from Renter's correspondent 
in France is perhaps the most important for a long time past. 
It is to the effect that the French Higher Command have 
obtained intelligence of the presence of the German Class 1920 
at the front. It is the misfortune of this war, and par- 
ticularly of this stage in the war, that matters of first-class 
moment such as this fail of public recognition because there 
is nothing striking about them and they cannot serve the 
uses of the popular Press. But the readers of Land and 
Water who are familiar with the fundamentals of the cam- 
paign will, I think, appreciate the value of this news. 
The German Empire has been compelled, ever since the 
end of 1914, to draw upon its younger classes, to "borrow 
men," as we may say, more and more as the campaign 
advanced. So have all the conscript belligerents : the 
French, for instance. But the German borrowing has been 
more rapid. Class 1914 was called upon immediately and 
normally. Class 1915 was called up earlier than had been 
expected. Class 1916 earlier still, and Classes 1917 and 1918 
continued the process of acceleration. Prisoners from the 
latter were taken as early as late in the month of July (if 
my memory serves me right) — that is, before the Battle of 
the Somme had been long in process. ^ 
Then came a period during which acceleration was less 
marked. Russia did nothing for months. When she did 
move it was only to break up. Htr offensive, when it came, 
was very short, ;uid was a pitiful failure. Then came anarchy, 
followed by treason upon the part of a cosmopolitan gang 
which had got hold of the capital. All this lowered the rate 
of German losses, and consequently relieved what already by 
1916 had become a very grave problem in man-power. The 
relief afforded to the German Empire by the collapse of 
Russia, and the subsequent betrayal of the Allies there, 
can roughly be measured by the figures with which my 
readers are familiar. For every 1.0 Germans down and out 
in the first seventeen months of the war, there were more 
than 7, but probably not 8, Germans down and out in the 
next seventeen months. Class 1919, therefore, though it 
