The Zonnebeke Show on September
a6th? 1917. Third Battle of Ypres.
104
THE YPRES TIMES
By Lieut. C. J. Hupfield, 2nd Battalion The Suffolk Regiment (yd Division).
ON September 20th, 1917, the British Army launched that famous series of
offensives at intervals of a few days, and PolygonZonnebeke was the
second. The capture of Zonnebeke village, church and brickworks, etc.,
was allotted to the 2nd Suffolks (3rd Division) and what transpired is described
by a participant.
We had been brought up in easy stages from the Bapaume area and went
forward via Watou and Brandhoek to camp at West Ypres near the Asylum,
where, on the night of 24th/25th, an unholy number of bombs around our tents
served to get our blood up."
All day on the 25th we were putting those final touches to the arrangements,
issuing flares, bombs, S.A.A., etc., and arranging about codes, trench maps,
food, and the customary letters home. Only at 5.30 p.m. did we hear that the
next push was twelve hours ahead of us, and we were to be right in it, though
we could hardly have thought otherwise. At 7 p.m. we fell in, armed to the
teeth with sandbags, Lewis guns, rations, gas masks, shovels and flares, quite
apart from rifles and kit, so that my men looked more like pack mules.
The Company will advance in fours from the right and we were off.
It took us nearly five hours to get to the taped assembly positions near
Hannebeek Wood, including a very nasty stretch near the ramparts and Railway
Wood, where we were peppered by shrapnel and had several men wounded,
although we were by then in single file. Our artillery preparation can only be
described as hellish." After negotiating the famous Cambridge Road and ear-
splitting gun-fire we took to the duckboards and kept passing mules with shell
baskets, and thousands of shell-holes with greenish water and even corpses stick
ing out here and there. We were certainly getting into the thick of it now.
About midnight we were split up into section diamonds and lay all round
the assembly positions in shell-holes, huddled up to keep as warm as possible.
Overhead the sky was cloudy but the guns had eased up and an ominous silence
fell over all. Mysterious figures moved about giving final instruction and cheering
up the men. Even so, not till 3 a.m. was I told that we go over at 5.50 a.m.
A heavy mist was rolling up and between one and three the cold was intense.
At 3.45 was the quietest time of all and instinctively we knew the guns were
preparing.
Then at 3.50, with two hours to go, every gun in Ypres, and behind, started
in our direction, and it seemed as if the Heavens had been wrenched open. You
could have read a paper by the gun flashes, five miles away on an average. It
was truly majestic and far eclipsed the Ancre or Arras. The screeching, tearing,
and "wobbling" overhead was unparalleled and caused us to forget the weary,
chilly night of suspense. Occasionally looking over the shell-hole to piercei
the mist I could see absolutely no one, and yet in our immediate vicinity were
scores of thousands of men^-all waiting for zero at 5.50. The enemy line was
held bv posts, in depth, not in strength, and innumerable pill-boxes were being
utilized, two on our own front being the Muhle and St. Joseph's Institute! In
all, their line was about a mile deep, with shell-holes in thousands, and water,
including the little Hannebeek stream, shelled out of recognition. After over an