46
THE YPRES TIMES
There were no assembly trenches to hold a large body of menindeed, there
were no trenches of any description. The time of waiting for a charge is one of
tense anxiety; officers consult their watches and mark the passing of the minutes,
the men string themselves up for the last desperate effort. Ordinarily a couple
of minutes takes them over the top and to the enemy. Here the moments of
anxiety were prolonged hour after hour until the waiting became agony, but the
spirit of the counter-attacking battalions never faltered, and when at last the
signal came they advanced with their usual steadiness and courage. The attack
had been ordered for 2 a.m., but the time had been repeatedly altered due
to the failure of some of the infantry getting in position. At last it came, the
signal being given at 7.10 a.m.
Units of the 1st and 3rd Divisions advanced. The enemy had a particularly
heavy show of machine guns, and even wired his front in the eighteen hours
in which he had been in possession. He had also built a new and very strong
trench just behind Armagh Wood which held up the whole centre of the attack.
There is little to tell of the counter attack. Battalions were late in arriving.
communication between Generals and their commands was little better than nothing,
and the position and strength of the enemy were unknown. The attack resulted
in a series of assaults by battalions, heroic but practically useless. At 6.30 p.m. it
was definitely known that the attack was a failure in its main objective, but, at
least, had achieved certain results. It had made good a line which ran unbroken
from the Menin Road to Hill 60. The deadly danger of the afternoon of June 2nd
had, for the time, passed, because the fatal gap was closed. The spirit of the
Canadians had arisen in adversity and they showed the enemy that so long as
they stood at the entrance the road to Ypres was no rose-strewn path. The 1st
Division had saved it from entrance from the north a year ago; the Corps now-
protected it from invasion from the south. The battalions of the 3rd Division had
proven themselves in action, and so entered into the fellowship of the Canadian
Corps. From the very outset of the battle they had been engaged against over
whelming odds and assailed by the fiercest bombardment yet experienced by British
troops. Their first line had been swept out of existence, and their second line
torn with great gaps. They held on despite their appalling casualties until what
looked to be an appalling defeat was turned into the prospect of a victory.
After the storm of June ist-31-d it became necessary to relieve the decimated
front line. The casualties had been severe. The casualty list of the 7th Brigade
indicates what the 3rd Division suffered as a whole45 officers and 1,051 other
ranks.
While the relief was being carried 011 and preparation being- made for another
counter-attack, the enemy suddenly moved against Hooge, the only remaining
front line in our possession. The Knoll, although it did not form part of the
Mount Sorrel system, w-as of great importance because from it one conld look
right down on the walls of Ypres. It had changed hands many times, until the
village was nothing but a heap of rubble drenched with the best blood of Great
Britain and Canada. It had been in our hands since the summer of 1915, when it
was lost on July 31st and retaken by the 6th Division on August 8th There are
three lines of trenches of great importance in the Hooge system. The front line,
which is on the extreme forward edge of the village beyond the crater blown by
the British in August, 1915, and looking down on the enemy trenches in the
valley beyond. Two hundred yards behind is a support line leading down to
Bellewaarde Beek. Behind the support line our machine guns were massed, and
back of them another strong line of trenches. In planning their attack on Mount
Sorrel and Hill 62 the enemy had not forgotten the important Knoll of Hooge.
