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

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The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1932 | | pagina 10